The Perusal #52: Meril Wubslin, Maria Arnqvist, Ghost, Otis Sandsjö…
February 13, 2024
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Maria Arnqvist ‘Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet’
(Sing A Song Fighter)
An incredible, adventurous concept (of a sort) album from the Swedish multi-instrumentalist and composer that not only showcases a breadth of ideas but also draws upon a wealth of worldly musical escapes and travels, Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet! is an ambitious statement.
One half of the self-professed “voodoo punk, art rock and psychedelic” Swedish duo Siri Karlsson, Maria Arnqvist weaves and sows the seeds for her own solo idiosyncratic fantasy on this character-driven songbook of piano-led or prompted quality vocalized and instrumental evocations.
Classically trained on the ivories, the source of this album’s deeply felt, keen and artfully beautiful material springs forth or subtly flows with an ever-moving cascade; a torrent; a disturbed pool or undulation of waves. Arnqvist proves highly talented in this regard; a near maestro of the instrument in fact, with certainly familiar echoes of what has come before – everything from the obvious classical strains and accentuated touches to the avant-garde of the name-checked Philip Glass and feels of quintessential balladry – but made a new when effortlessly merged with such instruments as the West African kora, an air of the folkloric and strange. Sousou Cissoko plays that kora incidentally, spindled melodically and woven beautifully – it reminded a little of the harpist Catrin Finch’s collaborative partnership with Seckou Keita.
There’s also a sort of Flyodian-progressive and Afro-jazz throaty and more float-y saxophone on a couple of songs. Add chamber-like and dramatic symphonic strings to that soundtrack – every track on this album could be a score in itself – and you have something very special and different and (that word again) worldly: at least transportive. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Arnqvist has traveled abroad a lot, with stays absorbing the local sounds of instruments in Ouagadougou in Burkino Faso, and Boston in the States. When pulled together the results are both sophisticated and playful; the mood and balance shifting between the oddball theater of late 19th century barrel organ stoked Wild Western saloon japes and shoreline yearned morning choruses to the elements. In fact, this could be an alternative Western, with the unsympathetic roasting sun shimmers and hoofed giddy-up momentum of ‘I Caught You Runnin’ evoking some kind of amalgamation of David Carradine’s Kung Fu, the Mongolian song of Namger, and Sakamoto’s piano – a pursuit across a mirage salt plains perhaps?
At other times the mood is more folksy-classical; although the enchanting opener (a sort of overview overture) seems to reflect a restless spirit, spinning between timeless tones, West African dances and the drama of Mick Harvey’s more stirring sober scores.
The vocals are sung in English when recognizable, as Arnqvist also lyrically and with a melodious air also just swoons or coos the tune, thoughts and descriptive vowels. And the lyrics build up a poetic picture of dramas, emotional ties, scenery and acts, whilst never really making anything explicit as such. Natural elements are left to speak, as Mary Rose and that Purple Quintet meander, fluctuate up and down the scales, quiver and ride the tumultuous softened waves of this loose story.
An enchanting and softening restless spirit is at work on this astonishing, well-thought out and enacted solo turn from the Swedish talent; an album that will gently unfurl its magic and depth over repeated plays and time: and for that, will only get better on each listen.
Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner & Isambard Khroustaliov ‘In The Glooming’
(Non-Applicable) 16th February 2024
From the perceptive, intuitive and often haywire minds of the applauded Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner and Isambard Khroustaliov (the nom de plume of one Sam Britton) trio, another exploration into the probed parts of the grouping’s psyche, art forms, inquiry and mischief-making. Thematically wise however, this is latest experiment at the edges of electroacoustic serialism and free-roaming is about the trio’s friendship, perseverance, trust and handle on being human: in a world of ever encroaching technological takeover I’d suggest.
Drawing on their myriad of respectable experience over the decades, with Ohlmeier bringing along his bass clarinet (a pretty deft and extraordinary saxophonist too), Fischerlehner on drums and percussive elements, and Khroustaliov rewiring his electronic apparatus, all three participants pull from the “gloaming” (an expressive word taken from Irish lexicon that describes the “twilight”) a strange sound world and performance of avant-garde jazz, Fortean supernaturalism, the alien, odd and indefinable,
Recorded over in the former Cold War walled East Berlin – make what you will of that location -, melodious, almost at times sweetened and floated, clarinet wafts and occasionally strains amongst the clicks, reversals, signals and oscillations of circuitry and transmogrified data language. All the while sifted, brushed, hinged and more bell shaken percussive instruments often amorphously find a rhythm, a hit or timpani roll in the vagueness of an idea and direction. Unsettled and yet never really hostile, totally maniacal or mad, this is a world in which ECM, Sam Newsome, Roscoe Mitchell, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Eric Dolphy merge with Walter Smetek (I’m thinking of his 1974 Smetek LP especially), Valentina Magaletti, Affenstunde Popol Vuh, Angelo Bignamini and Lea Bertucci. A track like the tracing of time, weirdly tweaked and near whistled ‘End Zone’ sounds positively sci-fi and a little ominous. Whilst, the classical unhinged toy workshop combination of elements on ‘Violet Weeds’ sounds like Prokofiev conducting Autuchre for a performance of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. And ‘Pixel Head’ re-engineers the matrix for an odd futuristic charge of static and cable disarray. Sharing is caring as they say, and this trio seems to deeply feel that connection and intuitive spirit of freedom in creating something challenging, but also in those very special interactive moments: moments inspired in a manner by that twilight hour between the dark and light. A curious, wild and untethered yet professionally made work that defies boundaries.
Meril Wubslin ‘Faire Cą’
(Bongo Joe Records) 1st March 2024
Taking their Mitteleuropa mummers vision on the trail to, of all places, Lewisham in southeast London, and the studio of Kwake Bass, the Meril Wubslin trio cast more hallucinatory hypnotic rhythms in new surroundings without leaving that signature mysterious dimension that hovers between French-speaking Lausanne and Brussels.
Bass (or to give him his full due and title, Giles Kwakeulati King-Ashong) has worked with a myriad of influential and explorative figures over the years (from MF Doom and Roots Manuva to Lianne La Havas and Kate Tempest), so carries more than a touch of class and cache of ingenuity and talent. And yet far from changing the sound, based a lot on repetitive rustic nylon-stringed-like guitar rhythms and both scrappy and dreamy spelled percussion, the producer has continued to aid in magic-ing up a strange rural mysterious combination of Rufus Zuphall, These New Puritans, The Knife, Goat, Holydrug Couple and Die Wilde Jagd.
When the dual male and female vocals – shared and in a strange harmonic symmetry – mistily arise from the mystique and often dreamy-realism of humming motored esoteric vapours and woozy oscillations, they evoke a very removed version of Chanson with Sister Dominique and the pagan song of Summerisle. In fact, there’s a quite a lot of esoteric and folksy-like references sound wise, from the processional to tribal. And a cross-timeline of influences that stretch back into the Medieval. On occasion those hypnotic rhythms and percussive scrapes conjure up Gnawa trance, or the herding of goats in the mountains during older, simpler, primal times. And yet, there’s also a semblance of the Blues, of Dirt Music, to be found amongst the glassy bobbled vibraphone wobbles, trippy drum breaks, pastoral drug lingers, vague visitations from another dimension, UFOs and surreal echoes.
A diaphanous and occult balance of the rural and otherworldly, of enchantment and suffused otherness, Faire Cą is yet another promising statement of headiness and entrancing spells from the trio.
Ghost ‘S-T’, ‘Second Time Around’ and ‘Temple Stone’
(Drag City Records)
Following in the wake of Masaki Batoh’s most recent of incarnations, the brain waves initiated Nehan project album An Evening With (reviewed last month in my Perusal column), Drag City are reissuing a triple-bill of vinyl albums from the Japanese acupuncturist, musician and apparatus building artist’s most enduring and long-running ensemble Ghost.
Tying in with the fortieth anniversary of that evolving, line-up-revolving group’s conception, and the tenth anniversary of its completion, disbandment, their first run of albums from the 1990s is being given another pressing by the label that originally repressed them in the first place, three decades before: that run quickly selling out off the back of Ghost’s Lama Rabi Rabi debut album release for the American Drag City Records imprint. Originally released by the Japanese P.S.F. label on CD, that triplet of records laid down the foundations for a nomadic commune trip of acid wooziness, otherworldly folklore, abandoned temple spirit communions and visions.
Hauntingly formed in Tokyo in 1984 by underground and head music stalwart Batoh, their existence and presence on the scene were as veiled, translucent and hermitic as their name suggested. Pretty much adapts of Amon Düül II (from Phallus Dei to Dance of The Lemmings) and Popol Vuh, but also the psychedelic and folk movements of the UK in the 60s and 70s (from the Incredible String Band to Third Ear Band, Haps Hash And The Coloured Coats and Floyd), and closer to home, such native acts as the Far East Family Band and Acid Mothers Temple, these hallucinatory seekers explored various forms of transcendental music and tradition – although, in the PR briefing they’ve been compared to Os Mutantes. All of those reference points can be heard over their self-titled debut (1990) and Second Time Around (92) and Temple Stones (94) albums; reissued here on appropriate psychedelic clear coloured vinyl for the first time in 25 years.
Recurring currents and vibrations can be found on all three albums; the last of which is slightly confusing with a lot of crossover track-titles from the previous two; it must be stressed however, that even though they use the exact same names on Temple Stones, they are different, produced it sounds like, from the same session, but either an alternative to or riff on the original source and tune, atmosphere. Starting with the demigod, deity or presence theme of the “Moungod” on the self-titled album, the ghostly visitations traverse misty-veiled shrines, mountainous trails to meetings with kite-flying yogis, Shinto ceremonies and holy cavern settings. Surprisingly avoiding any real freak outs – ok, the occasional build-up of acid rock thrashing, splashing and tumult, but relatively subdued on that part – the music and atmospherics are often drowsy sounding; spiritually wafting along and even traditional: imagine Popol Vuh, the Incredible String Band and Floyd meets Alejandro Jodorowsky on the Holy Mountain. There’s also a touch of Julian Cope and Jason Pierce, even The Cult amongst the Taoism and other venerated mysterious leanings and moss. And, something that will carry over onto all the albums, there’s a constant air of the Medieval, the courtly and a touch of psychedelic folksy parchment; from maypole dances to willowy recorders whistled and fluty pagan pastoral processions and merriment.
Second Time Around is produced in the same mold, but seems to also have a more progressive feel, and even an air of the Celtic about it; another occult folksy-acid journey through mythological and spiritual tapestries. ‘People Get Freedom’ introduces us to a spindled lattice of gong washes and harpist sound-tracked moss gardens; the stepping stones trip then extending out towards a culmination of talking to Yogi ADII, the Moody Blues and wistful waltzes on the title-track. ‘Awake In A Middle’ however, sounds more like Satanic Majesty’s era and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ Stones, a more doleful King Crimson and fiddly acoustic dreamy Yes. There are murmurings and the odd bit of mooning, spooky chanting, and mantras to give it that occult, otherworldly sound from the ether, the gods, and the transcendental planes.
Finally, the Temple Stone album suffusion of veneration and mystique wonders around those ancient alters like an apparitional collective of the Flower Travellin’ Band, Yatha Sidhra and The Mission. Disturbed mood music and background wails and shouts are balanced with strange primal vapours, acid-folk (again), downer almost shoegaze vocals (although, on the old and magical rural never-world of ‘Freedom’, it sounds like AD II’s very own Chris Karrer), Indian brassy resonance, paused thoughtful piano and overhead drones.
All three albums are brilliant at pulling you into the Ghost troupe’s world of mysticism, drifted travels, psychedelic projections and wanderings. And not one of them is any better than the other, quality wise. Together they form a near-linear bond, capturing a short period in the band’s early-recorded history – the first of these albums appearing six years after the group’s initial conception -, which lasted thirty years. If this introduction style purview and review does grab you, then be quick, as I suspect these vinyl editions will fly off the Drag City Records shelves.
Otis Sandsjö ‘Y-OTIS TRE’
(We Jazz Records) 23rd February 2024
Following up previous albums in the Y-OTIS series, part TRE continues to deconstruct, shape and rebuild in real time the untethered sessions of the Berlin-based, but Swedish born, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Otis Sandsjö’s studio experiments. With what has been called a “mixtape-like DNA” methodology, Otis with his long-standing foil and Koma Saxo leader Petter Eldh, and keyboardist Dan Nicholls, plus changing ensemble of musicians, remix themselves as they go along; fracturing, stumbling, free-falling, flipping, enveloping, cutting-up and sampling their jams into freeform opportunities and ideas.
The third album is much in the same vein: albeit this time around sounding more like a transmogrification of 90s and 2000s R&B and soul, with echoes and reverberations of slow elongated and stretched breaks. In practice this results in passing moments of J Dilla, Jimi Tenor, Madegg, Gescom, Four Tet, Healing Force Project and Shabazz Palaces tripping-out on jazz, funk and the blues. But that’s only half the story, as hinged and sirocco winded brass and woodwind is flipped out and put with an ever-changing revolution of morphed d’n’b, broken hip-hop beats, vague memory reflexes of Gershwin and the Savoy label era, The NDR Bigband, Philipp Gropper’s Philm and the most wobbly.
Nothing is quite how it seems, as the fluctuations and changes in the groove, timings and direction of travel often end up somewhere different; take the horizon opening ‘orkaneon’, which begins with a Ariel Kalma-style sustained, trance-y new age sax but finishes on Herbie Hancock being vacuumed and flipped by Squarepusher. In short: another successful adventure in the kooky jelly mould of hip-hop-breakbeat-jazz and beyond.
Various Artists ‘Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación’
(Bongo Joe)
A new year and a new musical excursion for the Bongo Joe label; a first foray and survey of the Dominican Republic’s localized ‘frantic’ Merengue phenomenon.
Sharing its Hispaniola Island location with Haiti (a most tumultuous relationship that’s led to various periods of civil war and bloodshed between the two former brutalized European colonies), the Dominican Republic is well placed to absorb the surrounding cultures of both the Caribbean and Latin America, with Merengue being just one these genres. The style was originally tied-in with the Spanish invaders, taking root on the Island in the early 1800s and played on traditional European instruments like the ‘bandurria’ style guitar. As time went by (especially in the more modern ‘Típico’ era) some of those original instruments were replaced by the accordion (introduced via German trade ships), the güira and the more localized two-headed ‘tambora’ drum (salvaged from rum barrels).
Its Island bedfellow of Salsa might be more globally renowned but Merengue is far older and established; a national dance and music used at various points in the country’s history and fight for independence as a rallying call, a unified and shared common bond: although, in one of the more controversial periods, Merengue was pushed and promoted by the military commander turn dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (nicknamed “El Jefe”). This particular compilation covers the creative boom after Trujillo’s death in the early 1960s – assassinated after a bloody, brutal regime that resulted in the estimated deaths of 50,000 people, including a sizable number of Haitians, and a number of opposition figures overseas. As the reins, paranoia of oppressive rule dissipated, culture grew once more with optimism. Merengue got a new lease of life with contemporary modernizations and expansions to the sound: now featuring strings and the bass. Pioneering figures like the iconic female trailblazer (and one of the stars of this collection) Fefita La Grande helped take the style forward and broke down barriers in a largely male dominated scene. The Afro-Hispaniola influences remained, as did the signature ‘quintillo’ five-beat rhythm, but there was a new step, confidence and joy to the music, which you will hear on this selection of nuggets reissued for the first time ever, chosen by the Funky Bompa – the alias of crate-digger Xavier Dalve.
Ten showcase tunes of quickened concertinaed ribbing (‘picaresque’ style), dancing, sauntering and jauntiness await; music from such commanding artists as the already mentioned Fefita but also the reeling sweetened and passionate tones of the mysterious Valentin and the Trio Royecell. Scuffling and skiffled, with the güira sounding like a scraped metallic washboard or cheese-grater, groups like the Trio Rosario step to a upbeat squeeze of accordion and touch of the Creole on the fun opening ‘Cuando Yo Muera’. But even when the themes, lyrics are meant to be more plaintive, even bluesy like Aristides Ramierz’s ‘Los Lanbones’, the action is less cantina woes and more “amigo” friendly light-heartedness.
The reach, influences, carry far and wide with knockabout she-shanty bellows, folk and the sounds of Afro-Cuba, Haiti and Colombia ringing away to an infectious, speedy and constantly lively rhythm. As an introduction to that, Merengue Típico offers an insightful party album survey of a Dominican Republic phenomenon, in many cases, still unknown to the greater world outside the Latin community. Here’s an infectious invite to put that gap in the musical knowledge right.
The Corrupting Sea ‘Cold Star: An Homage To Vangelis’
(somewherecold Records) 1st March 2024
Mainstay and foundation artist of the label he created, somewherecold’s Jason T. Lamoreaux pays “homage” and fealty to his hero Vangelis on his latest outing as The Corrupting Sea.
Arguably the Greek titan of the electronic and soundtrack form’s most enduring and influential work in the field of cinema and sci-fi, it is the icon’s distilled acid-pin-drop-rain atmospheric waterfall of dystopian mystery noirish Blade Runner score that inspires Jason’s Cold Star suites of synth evocations. The North American composer does this by fluently channeling that data, language and mood music whilst finding rays of hope and chinks in the metallic ominous granular skies.
Track titles will be familiar with even those with only a cursory interest in the grim futurescape and philosophical quandaries of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human storyline, of this bleak but incredibly affecting and prescient film – even more so in light of the introduction of such gimmicky but frightening programs as ChatGPT, and the encroaching possibilities of AI’s applications in making much of what we do redundant: even in the creative fields. For example, the ‘Voight-Kampff’ empathy test used to weed out the “Replicant” from the human in the film based on Richard K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is just one such obvious timely example; here, in this state, chiming with softened sleigh bells, shimmery starry waves and crisp little explosions of grainy fuzz bit-crushes.
But as I’ve already mentioned, Jason finds some levitated release of hope in the cogs of technological progress; see the tenderness and reflection that is applied to the short ‘Like Tears In The Rain’ suite, which references Rutger Hauer’s iconic replicant character’s last fatalistic scene and memorable quote of the film: “lost in time…like tears in the rain”. The femme fatale of the picture if you like, ‘Rachael’ (with all that name’s Biblical significance) is also a balance of sci-fi and carefully placed stirrings; the calls of the analogue, of Jarre, of arpeggiator cascaded notes and android data.
Tracks like the grainy chomping and zip-line rippling ‘Four Years’ – the programmed-in longevity of replicants, so they supposedly don’t get the time to achieve human emotions and to rebel from their servitude of heavy lifting and soldiery in futuristic off-worlds – are not so much unsettling, but do have detuned bends and an assailing sense of uncertainty and the alien about them.
‘Replicant Hunters’ which opens this album, is pure Vangelis, but also has a hint of the Klaus Schulze about it too; square waves and bobbed bulb-like notes pass like cruisers in the alt-future nights.
Incidentally, that album title, Cold Star, references the cosmological phenomenon of “failed stars”, or “brown drawfs” as they are also known; a star that doesn’t have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, and so is cold or tepid to the touch. But there is nothing cold or dying about this six-track score, as a final sanctuary of hopefulness in a hopeless bleak dystopia is found on ‘Refuge’ amongst the static-charges and last gasps of a ticking hi-hat rhythm. Corridors are built into these moments of escape and clarity, as Jason pays respect and comes full circle back to his original influence on first starting out in the world of electronic experimentation and mood music.
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’
(Audiobulb) 10th February 2024
Drawn together and what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.
The spaces in that title alongside reference prompts, inspirations motivated by the Japanese term for ‘continuous improvement’, “Kaizen”, and the procrastinated state of weakness of self-will known as the “Akrasia Effect”, are subtly and dreamily wrapped up in a gentle blanket of recollection. The lingering traces of humanity, nature and the cerebral reverberate or attentively sparkle and tinkle as wave after wave of drifty and pristine bulb-like guitar notes hover or linger, and passing drums repetitively add a semblance of rhythm and an empirical and evanescent beat.
The word ‘meticulous’ is used, and that would be right. For this is such a sophisticated collaboration and a near amorphous blending of influences, inspirations and styles: for instance, you can hear an air of Federico Balducci and Myles Cochran in the languorous guitar sculpting and threading, and an essence of jazz on the brushed and sifting, enervated hi-hat pumping drum parts. On the hallucinatory title-track itself there’s a strange touch of Byzantine Velvet Underground, Ash Ra Tempel and Floyd, and on the almost shapeless airy and trance-y ‘Unforeseen Scenes’ a passing influence of Mythos and the progressive – there’s also the first introduction of what sound like hand drums, perhaps congas being both rhythmically padded and in a less, almost non-musical way, flat-handily knocked.
Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open up primal, mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo express more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty. Here’s hoping OdNu + Ümlaut continue this collaboration, as this refined partnership proves a winning formula.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Perusal #49: Ndox Électrique, Rave At Your Fictional Borders, Tara Clerkin Trio, Wax Machine, Pidgins…
November 8, 2023
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Ndox Électrique ‘Tëdak Mame Coumba Lamba ak Mame Coumba Mbang’
(Bongo Joe Records)
Continuing to circumnavigate the depths of Africa, on a quest to connect with the purest origins of that continent’s atavistic rituals, the Mediterranean punk and avant-rock motivators Gianna Greco and François R. Cambuzat seize on the adorcist practices of Senegal’s Lebu people.
The successor to that partnership’s Ifriqiyya Electrique collaboration with the descendants of Hausa slaves (a project that produced two albums of exciting Sufi trance, spirit possession performance and technology), the next chapter, Ndox Électrique, radically transforms the Lebu’s N’doep ceremonies of spirit appeasement.
Living in the peninsula of Cap-Vert, at the western most point in Senegal, the Lebu community lives side-by-side with their ancestral spirits. And in these ritualistic female-dominated performances of entranced elevation, loud drums, dancing, sweat and blood, they are summoned forth through possession to help heal the world.
Sneering at any kind of classification (this is neither ethnographical research nor “postcard” world music), Greco and Cambuzat immerse themselves, working hand-in-hand with their Senegalese ensemble cast of megaphone wielding vocalists and musicians. It’s a world away, you’d think, from their post-industrial, Gothic post-punk backgrounds – when not on the African trail, both musicians join forces with that iconic deity of the underground N.Y. scene, Lydia Lunch, to form the raucous Putan Club. But they’ve found a lively connection, merging the clattering, bounding (almost like timpani at times) and shuttled drums and instruments, Muezzin-like calls, and more sacrosanct voices and song with chugged, churned, squalled, engine kick-starting and ripping post-rock, industrial guitars and tech.
The opening rattled, lumbering catharsis ‘Jamm Yé Matagu Yalla’ is an introduction to this hyper-hybrid; a mix of Vodoun, Marilyn Manson, Islamic Sufi song and shredding Sunn O))). Those authentic, in the field, trances enter the creeping dreaded world of the late Scott Walker, and the post-punk specter of Rema Rema and Itchy-O, in the raw and intensified drama of ‘Lëk Ndau Mbay’.
Even though the voices are yelled through a megaphone to be heard above the heightened din, they come across as quite harmonious: hymnal in some cases. Certainly creating an atmosphere of ancient spirit communion and deliverance in the face of oppression, it’s the crunch and grind, and supernatural machinery of their European partners that gives it all a moody chthonian edge; firing up evocations of Faust, Coil and NIN. Actually, the fluted and riled ‘Indi Mewmi’ reminded me of both early Adam And The Ants and African Head Charge.
Between worlds the Ndox Électrique transformation moulds spheres of history and sound, whilst creating a dramatic new form of communication and ritual. Summoning up answers to a sickening society, both groups of participants in this blurred boundary exchange rev-up the sedate scene with a blast of authentic regeneration and dynamism. One that is neither wholly African nor European. Dimensions are crossed; excitement and empowerment, guaranteed.
Assiko Golden Band De Grand Yoff ‘Magg Tekki’
(Sing A Song Fighter/Mississippi Records) 10th November 2023
The second stopover in Senegal this month (see above), couldn’t be more different. The Ndox Électrique collaboration raised adorcist spirits in a hybrid of ritualism and industrial post-grind, whereas the lively Assiko Golden Band De Grand Yoff either raise the roof off the capital’s nightspots, or, find naturalistic contemplation to the sound of a delicately, thoughtfully spindled kora.
Whilst sharing the same geography, the AGBDGY take their cues instead from Dakar’s dynamite music scene, but also embrace the rhythmic percussive language of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen, and the Afro-jazz and soul of such artists as Peter King and Manu Dibango too.
The moniker itself represents the group’s base of influence in the Grand Yoff commune d’arrondissment of the Senegal capital; widened out further to include the traditional rhythms that passed through the infamous, ‘House of Slaves’, Gorée Island – although its importance and legacy has been disputed amongst scholars and the like in recent years, this once independent colonized port outlier from Dakar was a departure site for transporting slaves to the Americas. Fought over by the British and French, it later became part of the greater Dakar region, and a tourist destination memorial to that evil trade.
The message throughout these spheres of geography is one of cooperation, based upon the Sufi teachings of the Mouride Brotherhood: a large school of the Sufi Order, prominently in Senegal and Gambia, the adherents of which are known as ‘Mourides’ – translated from the Arabic to mean ‘one who desires’. In the local Wolof language, culture of Senegal those students of the faith are called ‘Taalibé’.
Exciting and unifying that community for twenty years now, their infectious sound of cross-pattern, clattering and cascading drums, and call-and-response vocals has been picked up by the combined facilitating partnership of Sing A Song Fighter and Mississippi Records labels. Sing A Song Fighter’s founder, Karl Jonas Winqvist, came across the collective whilst creating his own Senegalese fusion, the Wau Wau Collectif, back in 2018. From that same Sufi spiritual cross-pollination of dub, cosmic sounds and Wolof traditions fueled project, the poet-vocalist mouthpiece Djiby Ly steps forward to rouse the AGBDGY’s chorus responses and cross-section of pitched voices. And although the fourteen-strong drumming circle is obviously rhythm focused, there’s also the addition of the beautifully lilting balafon, picked and plucked woven kora, both suffused and pecking horns, fluted wind instruments and a both Marseille and Creole concertinaed bellow and squeeze of accordion.
In action, they sound out a controlled raucous of rustling, shaking ancestral calls and conscious version of Afro-beat, Afro-jazz and Afro-soul; like Kuti sharing the stage with Laba Sosseh and Seckou Keita. As a counterbalance, a pause from the rolling and polyrhythmic drums, there are short interludes of time-outs in the community and under nature’s canopy of bird song: the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees overhead and all around, and of children playing in the background, as the kora speaks in communal contemplation.
At times they create a mysterious atmosphere of grasslands, and at other times, play a more serenaded song on the boulevards that lead down to the sea. On fire then, when in full swing, but able to weave a more intricate gentler sound too, the AGBDGY prove an exhilarating, dancing combo with much to share: the ancestral lineage leading back centuries, but lighting up the present. Thanks for both partners in bringing this album to a wider audience, and indeed my attention.
Tara Clerkin Trio ‘On The Turning Ground EP’
(World Of Echo)
The recordings, releases, may have been a little thin on the ground in the last couple of years; marking the time between this latest EP and the trio’s last, the In Spring EP. But in that space they’ve carried on the writing, and extensively toured both Europe and Japan, with the odd track escaping the creative incubator on the way.
Originally a much bigger, expanded prospect, built around Tara Clerkin, the Bristol unit shed five of its members to create a slimmed down trio. Flanking Tara in their diaphanous vaporous version of trip-hop, dub and gauzy kosmische are Patrick Benjamin and Sunny-Joe Paradiso. Together they have formed a beautifully conceived vision, bookended by a pair of amorphous instrumentals.
On The Turning Ground is a series of hallucinations and evaporations. But that’s not to call them translucent, as all five tracks have a real substance and emotional pull. The opening ‘Brigstow’ is a subtle incipient brush and sift of vapours, submerged bass, ghostly notes from Mark Hollis’ piano, a echo of Gallic-dub accordion, and lingering xylophone. Howie B’s Music For Babies, France, Širom, Embryo and Don Cherry’s Organic Society flow in on a reverberated drift.
The first of three vocal tracks, ‘World In Delay’ follows; another gauzy morphine of dub scatter drums trip-hop that features a lucid, meandered wistful quality: like Sade fronting Lamb, accompanied also by Sakamoto’s piano, and produced by Massive Attack in the late 80s.
On an EP that reminds me of my own middle age, and my formative years in the electronic early 90s, ‘Marble Walls’ is like a lost dream from XL Recordings or Deconstruction. Built around an Ibiza-esque acoustic guitar loop, Tara (I’m assuming) wafts a floated vocal to Portishead and Lemon Jelly vibes. The titular turning ground is built around another lovely acoustic loop, which falls in a gentle cascade throughout, like something from the Baroque era, or from classical Iberia. The beats are more like UNKLE. The feels, atmosphere and vapours like Lush collaborating with Seefeel and Freak Heat Waves.
The final instrumental track, ‘Once Around’, draws this EP to a close with an escapist ambient dream sequence of soundtrack Raul Refreé, waves, bellows, celeste and morphed distant chamber music. Coming full circle, the empirical gorgeousness of this final spacious wisp mirrors the opening ‘Brigstow’, on what is a transported, effortlessly sublime trip of reimagined 90s (some 80s too) influences. But there is something very refreshing, modern and confident in the making: refreshing too. I’m a convert anyway.
Pidgins ‘Refrains Of The Day, Volume 1’
10th November 2023
The dictionary describes Pidgin as a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often draws from several languages. Blowing all that open by drawing upon an amorphous palette of linguistic and worldly sources, the Pidgins duo of multi-instrumentalist Aaron With and drummer/percussionist Milo Tamez construct a removed musical dialect on the first volume of the Refrains Of The Day series (Volume 2 follows in 2024).
But it’s also an experiment in percussive rhythmic languages, using an eclectic assortment of instruments alongside insect chatter and bird-chirping moist rainforest field recordings. There’s some unusual apparatus indeed, used to emote a familiar yet otherworldly collage of environments: from the Laotian to the Chinese, Central American, African and alien. Much of this is down to the use of such unique instruments as the Cristal Baschet and glass harmonica: the former, made up of 56 chromatically tuned glass rods, which you rub with wet fingertips to illicit a ethereal sound, and the latter, uses series of glass bowls to produce tones by means of friction. Put with talking drums, the hurdy-gurdy and Chinese sheng, Maasai crosses paths with atavistic Mexican civilizations, Vodoun ceremony and emoted temple scenes in Xanadu.
It’s not surprising to find the duo referencing the fourth world and possible musics creations of Jon Hassell. But I’d also add Alice Coltrane, Desert Players Ornette Coleman, Ale Hop & Laura Robles and Walter Smetek to that pool of influences. When we hear a much effected, transformed voice, it’s either mysterious with longing and soulfulness, swimmingly quivered like Panda Bear, or, in the art experimentation form of Laurie Anderson using a Mogadon induced preset Speak And Spell.
New rituals, strange tongues and a obscure colloquialism emerge from drumming rhythms, whirly circled wind pipes, tines, metallic chimes and the morphed to produce an immersive world; one that’s simultaneously alien, naturalistic, primitive, supernatural, mystical, non-musical and complex. Nothing is quite how it seems in the pursuit of communicating a new multi-diverse sonic language; but that’s not to say it’s unsettling, just very interesting, as the direction of travel is not obvious. I look forward to hearing the next volume on this collaborative reinterpretation of language.
Rave At Your Fictional Borders ‘Potion Trigger EP’
With such an enviable CV of polygenesis creative outlets to his name, trick noisemaker and in-demand drummer Dave De Rose can be relied upon to guide himself and his collaborative partners towards ever-changing and open-ending musical horizons.
At the porous borders of cultural ambiguity, the latest communal project alludes to a ‘global awakening’: an expose of the ‘festering flaws in society’, and ‘the gradual realization that those in positions of power have forgotten their commitment to the people’ – if they ever did in the first place. Well amen to all that and more. Only, events seem to be running way ahead and out of control of governments and borders, with war on Europe’s door and in the Middle East.
But in turn, that nameless, unreferenced and untethered navigation of the current chaos is incredibly difficult to pin down. De Rose’s membership of Electric Jalaba, instigation of the Athens-London traversing Agile Experiments project and, most congruous, involvement with the doyen of Ethiopian music, Mulatu Astatke, are all drawn upon for a Rave At Your Fictional Borders. And as if the net hasn’t been cast widely enough already, De Rose is joined on this sonic adventure by Jon Scott (of GoGo Penguin note), Marius Mathiszik (Jan Matiz, I Work In Communications) and Henning Rohschürmann: you could say the melting pot has been truly stirred up.
Still rhythmic, even if the signatures are varied and at times like a drum kit engine slipping and spluttering in a staccato fashion, taking time to find traction and a groove, this quartet of performances has a certain drive and forward momentum. As vague as the provenance can be, with an amorphous bleed of the Atlas Mountains, Anatolia, the Hellenic, Balkans and East Africa, the opener (‘Fictional Border Crossings’) is brought in on a desolate mysterious temple wind, before building up the journey with an alchemy of silk Ethiopian mallet vibraphone, stylophone-like electric sparks, and sliding and shuffled prog-jazz drums. It sounds like a mirage.
Moving on, ‘Potion Trigger’ seems to merge CAN with Holy Fuck, Snapped Ankles and Richard H. Kirk; the rhythm a mix of dub, two-step, softened timpani and smashing splashes of cymbals. The mood becomes almost alien, the supernatural cries of incensed anger obscured but present as a fucked-up version of a air raid siren tries to wind up but dies out with a zip.
With a lolloped confident strut, echoed ricochet and rim shots, and hints of On-U Sound, Idris Ackamoor and Sly & Robbie, ‘New In Town’ ramps up the dub a notch, until a final phase of crystalized droplets cascade down on a cosmic plane. ‘Free At Last’, the jazz mantra of so many titles, locks into a nice intensity of Afrobeat, prog, electronica, jazz and breaks; like a moonbeam jam of Moses Boyd, Red Snapper and Battles. Not so much restless as always on the move, each track progresses along an unmade road: a map without borders or coordinates. Knowledge, experience and musicality come naturally, but it feels like these like-minded musicians were improvising, and just left in a room without preparation or communication to let go. There’s a knowing of course, and a concept that informs this EP, but this is an unconscious reaction to the present climate of fear, resignation and movement of people like no other.
Berke Can Özcan Ft. Arve Henriksen & Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘Twin Rocks’
(Omni Sound)
Sharing an evocative and near illusionary hiking trial with his musical foils, the highly prolific Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, and equally impressive and in demand baritone saxophonist, Jonah Parzen-Johnson, the Istanbul-born polymath Berke Can Özcan finds inspiration from a mystical, mysterious, historical and enriching environment. The ‘Twin Rocks’ of the title references one such stirring, and in this case personal, stumbled upon highlight from the Lycian Way; a long distance charted (and uncharted for that matter) walk that hugs the Southwestern coastline of modern day Turkey.
In atavistic times, this region would have been known as Lycia, a flourishing state/nationality on the edge of Anatolia during the 15th and 14th centuries BC; the architectural remnants of which can be seen carved into the reddish rocky landscape. Siding with the Persian Empire during its apex of power and trade, Lycia was eventually controlled in turn by Ancient Rome, the Byzantines, Selijuks and Ottomans.
With all that history underfoot and all around, the composer, musician and instrument maker Özcan and his two sparring partners, create magic and an air of mystique; amorphously blending sonic aromas that evoke the Mediterranean, Iberian, Middle East and Turkey. And yet, Henriksen’s rasp, mizzle and oboe-like trumpet additions on the vaporous shaping ‘Buried Palms Garden’ and dreamy, melting ‘Snake Behind The Valley’, reminded me of Sketches Of Spain Miles and Chet Baker. Parzen-Johnson’s saxophone meanwhile, has echoes of Andy Haas, Ben Vance and the Pharaoh on the Oriental dub hallucination ‘Hidden Village’, and reminded me of Idris Ackamoor on the drifted ‘Red Pine Bridge And The Crystal Clear Dead-End’.
When evaporating or wafting across the landscape, or gazing at the light as it sparkles off the calm tidal waves, the jazz seed effortlessly germinates into trip-hop, with slow breaks and those languid Portishead vapours
Suffused with a gentle form of jazz and almost trippy, near–psychedelic atmosphere of mirages, heat warped effects and reversals, this felt and transient journey also features Özcan’s almost hushed, translucent vocals. Alongside an array of brushed, sifted and rhythmically softly beaten drum apparatus (steel to what sounds like a frame drum), the affected warbles of wildlife, bobbled and tinkled vibraphone and purposeful, ruminated upon Sakamoto piano notes, symbolic proclamations of intention, redress and reassurance are made: the “I would never be the snake behind” line inspired by the pathway taken around those significant, chanced upon twin rocks. Sometimes this comes across vocally like Alex Stölze, and at other times, like a soulful, removed version of Jon Marsh from The Beloved.
Nothing feels real, despite the familiarity, as nature and terrain, the fauna and remaining traces of ancient civilisation combine to inspire a dream spell absorption of the Lycian Way. Twin Rocks is an effortless sounding travelogue of landmarks transformed into imaginative poetry, meditation, and self-discovery.
Sam Newsome & Jean-Michel Pilc ‘Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged’
Joining the ranks of the great jazz (although they go beyond that, into the blues, classical and avant-garde) duos, the partnership of experimental soprano saxophonist and composer Sam Newsome and pianist, composer and educator Jean-Michel Pilc left a critically acclaimed marker with 2017’s Magic Circle album. Before that, and ever since, both foils in that collaborative duet built up enviable reputations, notably with Newsome as a soloist, and Pilc with his trio.
Despite all that experience, their second album together is all about spontaneity. Devoid of planning, of ‘preconceived ideas’, the ‘unconsciousness’ of the album title is uncoupled and set free in a restless motion. The succinct, matter of fact philosophy behind the concept: ‘it works or it doesn’t’.
And so both in improvised and transformative modes they interpret well-worn standards and create new explorations; always with a view to showcasing their respective instruments and instinctive abilities as they react to each other’s assured experimentation. This translates into both recognizable sounds and playing, and those more envelope-pushing tests of abstracted recondite expression. In Newsome’s case, modified attachments turns his saxophone into a circular squeezed and vibrato reed version of a didgeridoo, or, the sound of a strained valve that needs oiling. For amongst shortened pecks, piccolo-like flights and fluted melodies there’s dry whistles, restless flutters, the gasped and hinge-like: in one moment Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, the next, more like Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton.
Pilc meanwhile, has a similar counterpoint of the semi-classical and avant-garde; using every part of his grand piano, from the inner spindled entangled guts to what sounds like a rhythmic taping of the lid. Obviously an adroit maestro, Pilc evokes a mix of Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor, Fabio Burgazzi (especially on the floated spellbound subconscious passage, ‘Bittersweet Euphoria Part 2’) and Stravinsky. And yet, the boundary testing instrumentation gels, feels descriptive and nearly always finds a connective melody of direction of travel.
Before I’d even read the track titles, listening without any reference points or info, I could detect a classy touch of Duke Ellington; a touch too of the Savoy label and even 1920s New York on the ship horn blown, Gershwin-esque tumble, mosey and slide, ‘Dancing Like No One’s Watching (But Everyone Is)’. That presence is made apparently obvious with the inclusion of the Duke’s signature, ‘Take The A Train’; the whistle and drive of a steam piston train rhythm all present and correct, but taken off the rails and into an untethered setting of swanned sax and hard bop punctuated runs. However, the old feel is undeniable. The duo also take a chance on the Duke’s ‘Solitude’; keeping the sentiments of fond remembrance and bitter loneliness, but finding much to play around with and reframe for an exploration of reflection.
Joining the old guard, there are also riffs on Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical number, ‘All The Things You Are’, and Irving Berlin’s ‘How Deep Is The Ocean’. The former dances on tiptoes to the old magic of the 1950s romantic jazz, whilst the latter is a somber reading of the original: the didgeridoo effect and a rough edged bristled vibration, the sweeps of a hidden brush and shifting tides all pointing towards something ominous, even alien, below the surface.
Away form the standards of jazz transformations, there’s the Alice Coltrane trinkets and wind chimes tingled and glinted, inner piano workings turn dulcimer and fluted sax climbing ‘Sounds From My Morning Window’, and the avant-garde boogie piano and chaotic strained sax tempest stirred, ‘The Storm Before The Quiet’. There’s some real class mixed with the unburdened pouring through every second of this album’s fifteen pieces; a real sense of freedom on the move, with the destination uncharted, unsettled and in some small part, mysterious. But as a showcase, the ‘unplugged’ consciousness platform reinforces the reputations of Sam Newsome and Jean-Michel Pilc’s explorative mastership and ingenious collaboration.
Wax Machine ‘The Sky Unfurls: The Dance Goes On’
(Batov Records)
Finding a more mellow tone under the influence of replenishing waters, the Lau Ro led Wax Machine project’s latest album offers a hazy and diaphanous musical landscape of rumination, wistful contemplation and enquiry.
Born in São Vicente, but leaving at the age of eight to emigrate to Italy, before eventually relocating to Brighton, the South American imbued group leader channels his global travels into the Wax Machine melting pot: a borderless, amorphous mix of the psychedelic, jazz, tropicalia and folk. After finally affording the airfare, Ro returned to his Brazilian homeland this year, spending five weeks reconnecting with family and the landscape. This heritage trip was followed up with a further five weeks of travel in Europe; navigating the waterfalls of the Pyrenees and Alps regions. Those stunning awe-inspiring vistas obviously had an effect, and so whilst concentrating the mind, Ro was moved to musically convey the thematic philosophically soulful concepts of ‘one’s own nature’, the breakdown of an individual’s identity, and the processes of reconnection.
New age in self-discovery tropes, the results are disarming, sensory, lush and gauzy across nine tracks of pastoral, hippie psychedlia, Latin, Laurel Canyon folk, dreamy and vaguely spiritual jazz, and more hallucinating spells.
Aiding Ro on this, mostly, relaxed traverse are Ozzy Moysey (on double bass and percussion duties), Adam Campbell (piano and keyboards), Isobel Jones (flute and vocals) and Tomas Sapir (drums, percussion and synths, plus the Clannad-like and veiled choral voices of Marwyn Grace and Ella Russell. Altogether in harmonious union, they drift and waft across a fantasy-style vision; allured towards ocean mirages, rivers, and of course, waterfall paradises.
The tropicalia sound of Ro’s heritage is back, and so when used to its fullest effect on such tracks as the lucid ‘Glimmers’, emotes the influence of Astrud Gibert and Giberto Gil. It must be said, as beautifully dreamy as it is, with touches of Hawaiian guitar, this coastal attraction lyrically could be about a drowning suicide; the Sarah Cracknell-esque wispy vocals protagonist seeming to sleepwalk helplessly into the ocean’s embrace, under a spell. In a similar – near uneasy if not psychedelic supernatural – way, the fluted, vaporous Holydrug Couple and Soundcarriers-like ‘Sister’ feels like an Italian Giallo moment. And the inter-dimensional radio set mystery, ‘Transmission’, reminded me of Belbury Poly scanning ghostly visitations from distant worlds.
Elsewhere, there are evocations of A Psychedelic Guide To Monsterism Island, the South Seas and the Valley Of The Dolls, with the Donovan, Fairport Convention, Greg Foat, The West Coast Experimental Pop Band, Misha Panfilov, Mark Fry and a calmer Marconi Notaro.
The Sky Unfurls: The Dance Goes On is a gauzy tapestry, created with much love, care and freedom; a wistful, rewarding experience of familiarity matched with Brazilian influences to produce a lush backdrop for questioning feelings and for making emotional connections of belonging.
Leisure FM ‘Fables EP’
(Ifm) 15th November 2023
Occupying a liminal position between the weary and resignation on one hand, yet dreamily gazing through the chthonian gauze of both Lutheran and Eastern European morose and fatalistic fairytale and fables towards hope, the Leisure FM twins offer hallucinatory experiences and cathartic relief on their debut EP.
Although certainly Gothic and shadowy, Milena and Weronika Szymanek cast spells of dream-realism electronic pop and despondent futility in conveying the eternal struggles of the heart; a process that’s mentioned in the accompanying PR notes as akin to the punishing eternal labours of Sisyphus, doomed by the Greek god Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down, and thus begins the whole sorry task again in a perpetual loop. Don’t feel too sorry for old Sisyphus though, the mythical founder king of Ephrya (or Corinth as it became known) wasn’t exactly the most pleasant or rational of rulers; punished for cheating death twice, but his rule was strewn with murdered bodies and other self-serving crimes.
Undeniably, with the existential thrown into the alchemy of occultism, there’s a suffused moodiness and supernatural feel to the quartet of songs on this EP. But with a touch of Blake’s afflatus anointed, diaphanous magic, there’s moments of Seraph light too. Caught between worlds you could say – between angels and demons -, the twins set out to process past experiences and feelings. Lyrically, these stories, chapters are merely implied. On the opening malady, ‘Weather Warning’, an opened heart is laid bare with an esoteric language caught on the haunted winds, whilst the vocally subdued and stripped of joy titular-track references the loss of identity in a violent relationship – imagine the Au Pairs and Propaganda in the bewitching hour, bruised physically and mentally.
In a flange-fanned, reverberated world of their own making, Leisure FM come on like a meeting of Nico, Lomi MC, the Cocteau Twins, Lana Del Rey and the Banshees. The production – which also includes a nice sympathetic, saddened dramatic stirring of strings – is near on perfect in setting the mood (thanks in part to third wheel producer Charlie Allen) and conjuring up veiled confessionals of the heart. In the less exotic studio environment of Woolwich, South London, Leisure FM sleepwalk through an imaginative dream-pop fairytale of existential melancholy and sharing.
ZAHN ‘Adira’
(Crazysane Records) 24th November 2023
As much as I can imagine driving at a motorik pace along the European motorway systems, travelling in a bumper sticker covered motorhome, from one less than glamorous location to the next, the latest opus-expanded album from the German trio of ZAHN is a more heavy trip into a vortex spun wrangle of far out prowls, oscillations and growling loaded holidaying travails.
Heads partners Chris Breuer and Nic Stockman are joined by Muff Porter’s and the live setup Einstürzende Neubauten recruit, Felix Gebhard, across eleven extended journeys in krautrock, the kosmische, doom, heavy and post-rock, and psychedelia. This concentrated unit expands on a number of tracks to accommodate like-minded foils; Markus E. Lipka (of Eisenvates note) for example, lending plectrum slides, rung-out and revving electrified rock guitar to the Black Angels and The Holy Family esoteric spell, ‘Amaranth’. The crazy diamonds Floydian-turn-Western-turn-riled-rocker ‘Schmuck’ features Radare’s Jobst M. Feit on squalling and bended wanes guitar duties, whilst Joanna Gemma Auguri apparently adds accordion flourishes to the prowling, thrashing and ghostly smoked soundtrack, ‘Tabak’.
Germanic (naturally) in tone, the sound of Klaus Dinger, Sky Records analogue files and early Guru Guru (on the Mayan vapour cosmic mystique of Bavarian fairground meets UFO, ‘Yuccatan 3E’) can be picked up on this road trip. However, having said that, the opener (‘Zebra’) features thick-stringed bass ala Boris and Swans, and the synthesized melodies of OMD and early Gary Numan (Tubeway Army). ‘Apricot’ seems to marry kosmsiche with hip-hop breaks, before slipping into halftime hovers of Floyd (again). ‘Velour’ is like a hallucinatory brush with Jessamine, Goblin and Slift, and the finale, ‘Idylle’ has a translucent quality of fanning Eno-esque ambience and more supernatural SURVIVE vibes.
Eating plastic, or Clingfilm, wrapped sandwiches by the side of the autobahn on holiday may not sound very exotic or exciting, but ZAHN transforms the innocuous travels across the continent of their youth with a gristly, cosmic and moody locked-in travelogue soundtrack of epic proportions.
Koma Saxo ‘Post Koma’
(We Jazz) 10th November 2023
What comes next in this “post” (post-modern? post-Covid? post-truth? post-band itself?) era for Petter Eldh’s loose configuration of collaborators? Already pretty much using jazz as a springboard for a road less (well) traveled, the Swedish composer, producer and bassist led unit of Koma Saxo were always in a constant motion of evolution; sounding like a band remixing itself in real time, as they blurred the lines between ‘live instrumentation’ and ‘repurposed sampling’. In practice, this ‘holistic vision of jazz now and soon’ sounds like Max Andrzejewski’s Hütte, 3TM and Ill Considered being remixed by J Dilla, Kutiman and the Cut Chemist.
Holding on to jazz, in its many forms, evocations of Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Leon Thomas, Marion Brown (ala Temps Fou), Duke Ellington, Jeremy Steig and Bobbi Humphrey can be heard morphing and reshaped into a breakbeat, drum ‘n’ bass and hip-hop production. This can turn out like the Healing Force Project repurposing swing, or, like an exotic, wavy Jimi Tenor and the El Michaels Affair breaking bread with Binker & Moses on a fantasy Nordic islet. One minute you’ll at the Mardi Gras, the next, walking the low-strung elastic splinters of a Charlie Mingus bassline.
A cross-generational reach of jazz history is taken in a wild, beat cutting and cyclonic direction by a quality unit that’s as familiar with the spiritual, be bop, conscious, Afro, blues and Savoy labeled genres as they’re with Mo Wax, DJ Shadow, Four Tet and the Guru. Post Koma is yet another lively, progressive album from a jazz project always in a state of change.
Sone Institute ‘The Narrow Gate And The Stone Clock’
(Mystery Bridge Records)
The biblical mixed with the alien, paranormal and industrial, Roman Bezdyk’s latest hidden sounds generated album is an obscured and mysterious control of the atmospheric and dramatic.
Following on from 2021’s After The Glitter Before The Decay landscape of specters, shapes and broadcasts from a post-industrial wasteland, The Narrow Gate And The Stone Clock scores the ‘altered states’ of Bezdyk’s ‘consciousness’; informed by the New Testament’s metaphor/analogy on choosing the right pathway (‘But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, And only a few find it’. – Matthew, or this one from Luke, ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter.’) and by the struck clock sounds of the church where he would meditate.
A road less obvious, the knocks on heaven’s gates, near ethereal female voices and subtle tones of Tangerine Dream’s cathedral analogue-synths and organ are enveloped by a creation story primordial sulphur of raining filaments, retro-space data calculations, Fortean radio set tunnings, Richard H. Kirk’s breathed condensation, the concrete, sound of scaffolding and Kriedler, Basic Channel and Autechre techno extractions. But within that description, there’s also a leitmotif of slot machine mechanisms, orbiting spheres, surface noise, metallic reverberations and scaly movements.
The presence of someone, or something from beyond this world is almost constantly present through this sub conscious journey from incipient creation to heavenly elevation. And so, although there’s plenty of near supernatural elements and acid rain Blade Runner moments, this synthesis of field recordings, mono synth, guitar, radio and FX improvisations also ascends to zither-like gilded stairs towards Laraaji, and the near meditative. But yes, this is a soundscape of great mystery; esoteric by design or not, like Gunter Westhoff and Bernard Szajner broadcasting from the ether as the mechanical church clock strikes and amorphous pathway is opened.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Jointly by Andrew C. Kidd and Ross Perry
Black Dog Productions ‘Bytes’ [1993]
The Black Dog ‘Spanners’ [1995]
(Warp Reissues)
Intelligent dance music. IDM. A difficult-to-define genre (if it even was one). Experimentation in dance music? The awkward shoehorning of ambience and danceable music? Flawed nomenclature aside, pinpointing the start of the movement is an even trickier task.
To dance is to move rhythmically. Ussachevsky and Stockhausen were creating electronic music in the 1950s, albeit it is difficult to argue that their creations were ‘danceable’. There are danceable moments on Spiral (Vangelis, 1977) and Équinoxe (Jean-Michel Jarre, 1978). Then there was the electro-pop Kraftwerk and the danceable synth-pop sounds of the likes of OMD, Moroder, Numan and Cabaret Voltaire. Yet, the sound that we most associate with modern-day IDM probably arrived in the very early 1990s. Utd. State 90 by 808 State (ZZT Records, June 1990) is an early example of the abstraction which underpins IDM, albeit that album was palpably more familiar as a resident in acid house. Tricky Disco by Tricky Disco (Warp, July 1990), Frequencies by LFO (Warp, July 1991) and Analogue Bubblebath by Aphex Twin (Mighty Force, September 1991) were IDM pathfinders. The public were probably exposed to IDM through Accelerator by Future Sound of London in April 1992 (released on Jumpin’ & Pumpin’). Warp can take credit for the naming of IDM on the compilation album, Artificial Intelligence, in July 1992.
Bytes (originally released in March 1993) is one of the most influential works in the intelligent dance music scene (it is regarded by some as the seminal work of IDM). The first iteration of the track Clan (Mongol Hordes), the work of I.A.O, an early moniker of Ken Downie (one of three aliases used on Bytes), featured on Warp’s AI compilation. Although Bytes is a compilation album, it has always been more synergistic than that – a musical Megazord of sorts (if such an obviously ‘90s reference can be afforded!). It was the third album in the Artificial Intelligence series and is thirty this year. When it was first released, it was a promise of futurity. Akin to the golden age of science fiction, there was experimentation, and comparatively difficult-to-differentiate narratives – the listener is drawn in and out of various sequences, some real, others fanciful.
There is no doubting the influence of the Detroit techno scene of the mid-1980s and its dramatis personae: the joyful R-Tyme; the villainy of Suburban Knight; the realism of Model 500; and of course, Derrick May. Listen to the analog crunch and pulsing rhythm on the opening Object Orient (Plaid) – two hallmarks of that sub-genre. It railroads through the sonic journey with playfully synthetic melodies, slowing only occasionally for brief vinyl cuts. It is a deconstruction of what preceded it, like time folded up in slow motion. Similarly, the repetitive four-four chops on Merck are akin to a Mayday track; the keys, syncopated at times, improvised later, dance their macabre dance. The Phil 5 interlude that precedes Fight The Hits harkens back to The Art of Stalking by Suburban Knight; the same could also be said for Atypic’s masterpiece Otaku which sadly did not appear on Bytes – this featured on the Black Dog Productions E.P. released in May 1992.
Bytes is fantastically congruous. After Merck (Balil) fires off high-frequency plasma rifle shots in rapid succession, its latter half is mesmeric and glistens into the orchestral opening of Jauqq (Close Up Over)*. As the syncopated rhythm fades, a metallic beat enters, and the sound is progressed. Another fine example of this is Olivine (Close Up Over) – IDM in the definitive sense – and its light synths that dot around the checked squares of some strange sonic chessboard. Here, the rhythm progresses up and down like opposing rooks; the L-shapes of the syncopated synth are warring knights. The lithe ending is regal, and heralds Clan (Mongol Hordes) (I.A.O.)– queenly, like the multidimensional chess piece, it serves to take the rest of the board out. It is IDM ex-animo. Its movements pitch-alter. This is music from the soul. It sounds as genre-buckling now as it will have done in the early 1990s. The alarm-like initial melody initially hides the subtle breakbeat that builds into the piece. The 4-4 rhythm doubles up, almost rolling over itself. The four-key synth melody stirrups. The melody changes. A deeper bass commandeers.
Futurism: lasering zaps and string stabs on Caz (Close Up Over) and the steely undertones of Jauqq (Close Up Over). Sporadic canons also unload on Focus Mel (Atypic) in a manner that is not too dissimilar to early Subotnick and Nu-Sound II Crew (nearly a half-century later), or an A. Bertram Chandler hero travelling ahead to save us, the listeners in the present day. Its outro is an echoing aftershock from another place – the future is being told by Xeper as he knocks hard on the other side of the great glass door of time. The track preceding it – Carceres Ex Novum (Xeper) – underpins the experimentation which defines Bytes.
Fight the Hits (Discordian Popes) is an awesome percussive assault (similar to Polygon Window’s Quoth) which serves as a bit of a palate cleanser and a much-needed bridge between the chaotic Yamemm and Handley’s magisterial three-track denouement. Yamemm (Plaid) itself is fragmented and perhaps anomalous in this album†.
Bytes concludes with 3/4 Heart (Balil). The stock-heavy modulations are polyrhythmic. A Vangelis-esque synth is organ-like at points. The melody is snappy – danceable even! A half-clap effect – perhaps an imagined crowd – heralds the vocal line, “we must surf the universe”. The sound at this juncture is more refined, the narrative complex – the listener revolves around in a full-circle. Oneness is achieved.
At this point, it is worth mentioning how instrumental Ed Handley is to the legacy of Bytes as a groundbreaking album in IDM’s naissance. Atypic(Turner)’s Focus Mel is excellent, but it his only solo track on the entire record, and Downie’s three contributions are dynamic detours in their own right. Handley absolutely dominates this album with five solo tracks and two as part of Plaid. Whether it is Balil or Close Up Over, his mastery of clever arpeggios, countermelodies and otherworldly harmonic pads married with second-wave Detroit rhythms give the album a melodic heart, which beats all the way through from Object Orient to 3/4 Heart.
Bytes (and by extension, The Black Dog Productions moniker) also acts as an important milestone in Plaid’s evolution as a duo. Before it, we can hear on disc one of Trainer (Warp, July 2000) – an excellent compilation of Plaid’s early career output – that the group were more experimental, sample-happy, willing to genre-hop. Take the Latin-infused breakbeat stylings of Scoobs In Columbia, the jazz-tinged Slice of Cheese, or even the proto-jungle of Perplex (all these tracks were originally released from the oft-forgotten debut album Mbuki Mvuki, released on The Black Dog Productions label in 1991). Bytes on the other hand showcases a more focused pair, albeit a little lop-sided, that fills the record with top-tier ambient techno (which yes, will always get the IDM treatment!).
Spanners (originally released in January 1995), their first release on Warp, was the hit LP of The Black Dog – and for good reason. It is great to think that ‘way back then’ albums that clocked in at 75-minutes were charting (imagine that nowadays when albums are often sub-30-minutes). Admittedly, we live in a different time where attention spans are shorter. Most tracks on Spanners feel like a tug-of-war between Plaid as a duo and Downie as a solo artist. Plaid in 1994/95 had their more functional IDM/ambient-techno sound figured out, whilst Ken Downie remained somewhat of a wild-card: his trappings being more cinematic, sample-based and experimental, drawing from a much broader spectrum of influences. One of the elements we most enjoy about the output from the original Black Dog has been trying to surmise not only who did what in each track, but also which members were involved in certain outings. This is no more rewarding than on Spanners where some tracks seem like the work of a sole member (usually Downie), whereas other tracks feel like the work of a tag-team, either consisting of a Plaid member and Downie, or in the case of Tahr and Frisbee Skip, Plaid on their own. Frisbee Skip could very well double as a bonus track on the duo’s first (mainstream/Warp) full length, Not for Threes, released in October 1997.
The opening to Spanners is Raxmus, a classic in the downtempo repertoire; its sawing introductory synth leads into a horizontally relaxed beat. Raxmus feels like one of the more seamless tracks on the album, and we speculate that it is possibly a Downie/Handley duet: Downie providing the trip-hop template; Handley layering in his Balil-style harmonics.
The heavily-syncopated rhythm on Barbola Work (which disintegrates towards the end of the track) is interspersed with boings and hits and twizzles. It follows the formula that many of the early tracks on this album have: Downie providing the track’s introduction, throwing a wide range of vocal samples and/or exotic instruments at you, before Plaid build the track up with their infectious basslines, whirring clicks, zapping sound effects and magical synths. The Sugarhill Gang-laced explosion of an intro on Barbola Work is Downie through and through. Plaid then takes over to put down the melodic scaffolding and beat-work. The transition admittedly does not work quite as well on this occasion as it does on the proceeding track, Psil-Cosyin, perhaps coming off as a little dissonant.
Arguably the most cohesive three-track sequence (or four if one includes Bolt 3) follows. A major Locrian scale surfaces on Psil-Cosyin and scintillates in scaling brightness as the piece progresses. This is one of two clear highlights of the album where all three members of The Black Dog play to their individual and collective strengths and produce a definitive masterpiece. As an early Spanners track, the song structure is as described in the last paragraph. One can consider Psil-Cosyin as being composed of three suites: in the first, Downie arrests your attention with a mysterious intro of odd vocal samples and pipes; the second is signature Plaid with a slow and progressive build-up; the third is a roaring crescendo which serves as a climax. Here, all three members of the group function as a rare and perfect whole: Turner’s acid synths; Downie’s eclectic sampling; Handley’s Balil-esque angelic arpeggio. The concluding higher-rpm of the track serves perfectly to lead-in the membranophonic beat that anchors the light synth swathes on Chase The Manhattan, which may be a Downie solo venture or a collaboration between Downie and Turner. It is tribal-house-infused. The spacey pads are those that we often associate with Downie’s Xeper alias; Turner possibly contributes with acid licks and humming bass lines.
Tahr is an amalgam of the latter two tracks: a polymer-pungi weaves around a 4-4 beat. In this piece we hear a lot of Turner’s percussive sensibilities, addictive basslines and frantic trance-like synths (these can also be heard on Atypic’s Jolly on Trainer). Handley comes in later with another Locrian melodic flourish. Although Tahr is a short track, it is a great example of Plaid’s symbiosis.
One criticism we have of Spanners is its length. The 19 tracks are not an issue (the Bolt skits are sometimes only seconds long); rather, it is the occasional meanderings of the trio. Perhaps this is because thirty years have passed and listeners of the present day are used to more perfunctory albums clocking in at sub-30-minutes. Take Further Harm as an example. It is an expansive piece, one that stretches in and out, starting in the realms of downtempo, ending in synth-plopping abstraction. That said, it is one of the greatest examples of the stylistic fork-in-the-road (or tug-of-war) between Plaid and Downie. All three members are involved here, and the stop-start industrial breakbeat combined with the odd mantra of a vocal sample gives it a ‘train that is meandering down the track and picking up steam’ feel. More samples are layered in as well as all the sonics that Downie brings to the table, and then, two minutes in, the signature Plaid-synths, pads and basslines play out to give the track a melodic grounding that it did not have before. The hip-hop breakbeat is replaced entirely by a more industrial one in its later stages. As a piece that starts off travelling in one direction, Further Harm changes tracks, and an unpredictable journey ensues – it is a microcosm of Spanners.
Utopian Dream is similarly frequentative. It is one of the most leftfield pieces on the album. We have never heard anything like this from the Plaid members (was this a Downie solo?); imagine a harsher version of Boards of Canada’s Zoetrope on In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country (Warp, November 2000). The elegiac Nommo and its modulated synth stanzas and bassline climb their respective octaves – sequentially. It could have featured in a fictional Xeper album along Carceres Ex Novum on Bytes. Could the track idea have been consolidated, or even progressed like Olivine or Clan On Bytes? Regardless, Nommo remains cinematic.
The right balance between track length and monoinstrumention is achieved on Chesh, the other album highlight (it feels like more of a Handley solo piece, or mostly Handley with (possibly) Turner adding in a background layer). Pseudo-mythical modulations ascend and descend masterfully – imagine Ransom first exploring Malacandra (an Out Of This Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis reference), or the space sequence in the 1950 film, Destination Moon. There are echoes of Andreas Vollenweider too. The Balil style countermelodies and light airy synths interplay with the heavier reverb-laden keys – it is a magnificently poignant closer.
Spanners is a work of subtly in both melody and rhythm. Take the lithe key flourishes on Pot Noddle, ceilinged by the quiet clarion of higher synths; the guitar is indistinct, and the rhythm section almost organic. Fast forward to the sounds of Four Tet. The start-stop breakbeats we heard on Further Harm, albeit slower. The frantic ‘western saloon piano’ sample serves as a mid-point alarm clock. End of Time thunderously drums around penetrating synthetics. It is punchy, echoing the head nodding thrums of Fight the Hits (Discordian Popes) on Bytes. It is also trancey, and chaotically space-like (imagine the Starship Enterprise on an intentional suicide mission!). The time-warping synths are magnificent and reminiscent of early Black Dog tracks like Ambience With Teeth and Virtual, both released on the Virtual EP (Black Dog Productions, April 1989).
The skits Bolt 1 – 7 appear at varying intervals on Spanners. Some are simply white noise and filtered static, others almost wheezy. Their purpose is unknown – are they the voices of pulsars, or the sounds one would experience in the belly of an exploratory spaceship? Bolt 3 harks back at the Phrygian Psil-Cosyin and the chaotic goblet drum effect that thrums on Chase The Manhattan. Bolt 7 slides into obliquity, and onwards to Frisbee Skip. Listening to the Bolt skits again, their darker and more intense aesthetic share a similarity to Allegory 1 [Red], which Downie et al dropped in 2020. The third track on that release – Bar 331 – is metallic and off-key, an eerie transmission that has resurfaced 25-years later. Unlike the Phil interludes on Bytes, which serve as key intros and outros and transitions between certain tracks, the Bolt skits feel more like aural non-sequiturs. After listening to them again, they remind us of the more experimental segments of tracks we would hear on later Plaid albums such as Rest Proof Clockwork (Warp, June 1999) and Double Figure (Warp, May 2001).
Perhaps due to it being released on General Production Recordings rather than Warp, we consider it interesting that The Black Dog’s second album – Temple Of Transparent Balls – has not been reissued. It split their audience down the middle. We still enjoy listening to the ‘progenitor’, almost stock sounds that feature on that release. It had a machine-like quality, an insight into the deeper engineering works of IDM: a sonic forge with the anvil strikes on display.
On Spanners and Temple Of Transparent Balls, Downie’s approach and sound is definitely more unpredictable and harder to pin down than the Plaidsters’ experimentations and manipulation. We feel that the Plaid duo provide the two Black Dog albums‡ with less experimentation and a lot of the more conventional beat-work, basslines and melodic structure that would soon form the foundations of their Warp-era work, whilst Downie, the aforementioned wild-card of the trio, added in an off-the-cuff sample here, some industrial Meat Beat Manifesto-esque breakbeats there, or some bizarre and dissonant sound effects out of nowhere. He also seems to be the more cinematic of the three; his sounds are often themed on science fiction, and past and future landscapes.
So, in 2023, where do Bytes and Spanners sit in the pantheon of intelligent dance music? Well, Handley, Turner and Downie are rightly the archetypes of the IDM sound in the same way that Richard D. James (as The Dice Man), B12 (as Musicology), Autechre and Alex Paterson (as Dr Alex Paterson) are by their participation on the first Artificial Intelligence release. Having been forged out of the molten ambient techno and fiery rave scenes, the joy in returning to Bytes has been its rhythmic experimentation. Although not perfect, Spanners achieved what it set out to do. It is expansive, and labyrinthine – it washed away the harsh melodia of Detroit techno to toy with its listeners.
After the synergy, the separation. We are left with The Black Dog Mk.2 (Downie and the Dust brothers) and Plaid. The subsequent releases of The Black Dog marked a departure in sound in some regards, yet their output remains as heterogenous and experimental as it did all those years ago. The ambience of Music For Photographers (2021) is one for the musical aesthetes of this world; as an album inspired by the slab-grey brutality of the concrete architecture of Sheffield, it is wonderfully light.
The work of Turner and Handley continued as the dynamic Plaid. The duo would go on to become a permanent fixture with electronic giants Warp, starting with the ambitious and guest-heavy Not For Threes in 1997, consistently putting out records with the label to this day, a very impressive feat indeed. But how does Spanners fit in with Plaid’s break-away from The Black Dog? From what we can hear on Spanners, Plaid had become an almost-finished article with both members Handley and Turner comfortable in their respective roles. Handley clearly had already found his niche as the melodic heart of the group under his Balil alias on Parasight EP (Rising High Records, November 1993) and Bytes. We hear this consistently again and again on the most melodic segments on Spanners. By this point, Turner had also spread his wings under the Tura alias, switching to this from Atypic around 1994 (his work as Tura can be heard on the earlier-mentioned Trainer). This cemented his role as the more technical of the two: a master of infectious basslines, staccatic synths and dissonant zaps. Interestingly, Handley and Turner’s decision to move on as a duo also led to them re-embracing the genre-bending experimentalism that marked their earliest Plaid material, particularly Mbuki Mvuki. Nevertheless, no matter what sub-genre they would delve into on subsequent albums, Bytes and Spanners provided the blueprint for what would become Plaid’s core sound.
Those who listen to Bytes and Spanners in the present day will enter a sonic-time capsule: a time when a new world was burgeoned upon the drawing of the hip hop, electro and early Detroit techno influences of the late 1980s. This was a time of innovation, and deeply intelligent composition.
Footnotes:
* On the original Bytes release, this opening was actually an interlude titled Phil(7), the final of the Phil interludes. These interludes (mysteriously credited to Echo Mike, a handle to whom the identity has never been revealed) are not listed as separate tracks on the re-issue, yet they are vital elements ensuring that Bytes as an album works as a cohesive whole.
† This feels like something from Plaid’s 1989–1992 phase when they were experimenting with different sounds and styles, particularly hip-hop, early ‘90s industrial-breakbeat and house. These styles are also evident on the early EPs of The Black Dog.
‡ We are careful not to classify Bytes as a Black Dog album as it was released under Black Dog Productions, the name of their label, and a sort of holding company of all three members of the group’s respective aliases. We have also been careful in differentiating between this and The Black Dog which was the name used for their group efforts as a trio.
DOMINIC VALVONA’S MONTHLY RECCOMEDNATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
(Photo credit: Ben Semisch, courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts)
Jaimie Branch ‘Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war))’
(International Anthem) 25th August 2023
As an unwittingly last will and testament, the late experimental trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s final led album with her Fly Or Die ensemble is a beautiful collision of ideas and worldly fusions that pushes and pulls but never comes unstuck. In fact, despite the “world war” suffix backdrop this album of both hollered and more disarming protestation colourfully embraces the melodic, the groove and even the playful.
Whilst the “avant-garde” label sticks, this rambunctious, more ambitious, more demanding minor opus flows and swings to a polygenesis mix of spiritual, conscious, Afro, Latin and Ethio-jazz, the great American songbook, no wave, noise and the psychedelic. And yet, on the other hand, is almost punk in attitude; a sort of anything goes in the pursuit of the message: an embodiment of challenging the boundaries.
In light of her untimely death at the age of just thirty-nine last year (the release of this album tying in with the first anniversary of her passing), this incredible statement can be read as a sonic monument; a legacy project left behind as a blueprint for a whole movement. The lyrics to the actionist rumpus ‘Burning Grey’, delivered more like Ariel Up or Polystyrene, to a swinging protest march of Phil Cohran, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and Cab Calloway, seem almost prophetic: “Wish I had the time” and the lasting sign-off, “Don’t forget to fight”.
The final album is one Branch would recognize; more or less musically complete, recorded as it was back in April of 2022 during an artist residency at the Bemis Center For Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Branch’s sister Kate and a cast of collaborators rallied round to finish the artwork and production; the final article a proud achievement encouraged on by well-wishers and friends alike.
Alongside “Breezy” Branch, who not only masters the trumpet but pushes her voice like never before and picks up on the percussion and some keys, is her stalwart troupe of Lester St. Louis (cello, flute, keys, marimba and voice), Jason Ajemian (double bass, electric bass, marimba and voice), and Chad Taylor (bells, drums, mbira, timpani and, you guessed it, marimba). That quartet is expanded further by an array of guests, including a trio of notable Chicago-hailed innovators (the city, one of Branch’s biggest influences and home for a period), the arranger/composer/engineer/trombonist Nick Broste, musician/vocalist Akenya Seymour and fellow International Anthem label mate, the drummer Daniel Villarreal (he released his debut, Panama ’77 on the imprint last year). Rounding that worthy impressive list off is the American multi-instrumentalist, Cave/Exo Planet/Circuit des Yeux (the list goes on) instigator Rob Frye.
Not so much a surprise, the album opens with a sort of stained glass bathed organ overture: part the afflatus, part pastoral hallowed ELP, part new age kosmische. A roll of bounded controlled thunder and gravitas is added to a crystal bellow and squeeze of radiant notes and the thinly pressured valves of Branch’s trumpet, which makes a brief appearance after the Ariel Kalma-like transcendence. ‘Aurora Rising’ lays down a short ceremonial communion with nature’s light before changing gear and spheres of influence. ‘Borealis Dancing’ now adds Mulatu Astake Ethio-jazz, a touch of Fela Kuti, Don Cherry and Yazz Ahmed to the ephemeral Northern Lights show as Branch toots long and softly at first before changing to higher pitch shrills. The rhythm, timing changes at the halfway mark towards a slinking groove of funk and Afro-jazz, the trumpet now cupped and echoing.
By the fourth track, ‘The Mountain’, there’s a complete sea change in mood, direction as Branch and her foils transform The Meat Puppets quickened country yin ‘Comin’ Down’. A dueting Branch and Ajemian bring it back home (so to speak) to the Ozarks and Appalachians via Paul Simon, Dylan, 60s West Coast troubadour traditions and a reimagined Sun Records. A brassy-sounded trumpet repeats the tone and springy country vocals as a gurgle of drawn-out cello plays a more somber rumination of hardy travail. To be honest, I was unaware of The Meat Puppets original, but this is a welcome meander in a different direction.
A full lineup joins in on the marimba heavy carnival turn mysterious swamp ether ‘Baba Louie’. Francis Bebey swerves to Satchmo New Orleans, whilst taking a dance around Masekela’s Soweto on a bustled bounce of joy and triumph, before succumbing to the voodoo psychedelic vapours; enticed by a cooing R&B flavoured misty Seymour. This bleeds into the bluegrass fiddled stirrings of ‘Bolinko Bass’, another Orleans evoked, almost regimental drummed bayou Mardi Gras of David Byrne, Funk Ark and Phil Ranelin. Almost mournful, ‘And Kuma Walks’ is more bluesy sounding, yet estranged at the same time; skulking amongst the spirits as someone saws through a fiddle as the trumpet aches in elegiac plaint.
Single, ‘Take Over The World’ is a hyped-up rattle and untethered excitement of no wave, punk jazz. Branch repeats a wild mantra and plays a burning bright thrill of trumpeted blasts whilst a controlled chaos spins all around her. Protest and partying converge for an electrifying, and later on, psychedelic bending stretched act of defiance.
The album ends by simmering down to a period of Afro-spiritual lament and reflection, on the sloganist berating ‘World War (Repirse)’. There’s serious bowed strings, trilled and forewarned trumpet, a sustained organ and windy, desolate enacted atmosphere on this weary actionist swan song: Branch urging caution at “false flags” and encouraging the fight.
For me Branch’s main instrument burns bright, and yet never seems to dominate, lead or overstay its welcome at any point on the album. Not for nothing is her own quote of “…meaning every note”, with not one rasp, trill, toot and cycle out of place; nothing is pushed but just felt and right at that moment. It feels to me, despite such a rich and diverse back catalogue, that Branch had so much more to give, her best still to come. And her gift was not just in crossing and mixing styles, influences, but also in pushing others to reach their own full potential as musicians. Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war)) is an accomplished album that channels the legacies of Chicago, New Orleans and New York to create an eclectic modern adventure in protest jazz.
Knoel Scott Ft. Marshall Allen ‘Celestial’
(Night Dreamers)
A leading light in the Sun Ra cosmology since auditioning for the Saturn jazz ambassador’s famous Arkestra ensemble in 1979, the baritone saxophonist, composer, vocalist and, when the occasion arises, dancer Knoel Scott amasses a lifetime of experience and musicianship on his debut solo-headed album. I say debut and solo, and without the extension of his previous KS Quintet named release, but the reeds specialist shares his Celestial project title with the Arkestra’s freeform progenitor, Marshall Allen.
Allen’s relationship with Sun Ra, on an album positively radiant and lunar with his guardianship and influence, goes back much further than Knoels; a stalwart since the ensemble’s formation in the 1950s, leading the troupe, the baton passed down as it were, after the cosmic Afrofuturist titan’s death in 1993. Unbelievably still in fine fettle, despite almost celebrating his centenary (that’s next May by the way), the avant-garde, inter-dimensional alto saxophonist, flutist, oboe, piccolo and EWI (that’s Electronic Wood Instrument) synthesist can be heard lending the latter’s strange sci-fi arcs, bends and space dust to the album’s title-track. It’s unsurprising to find that ‘Celestial’ has all the hallmarks of Ra too, written as it was originally with strings for the Arkestra, but never recorded.
The Arkestra family is extensive with celestial poetry taken from the late Arnold “Arto” Jenkins, recited on this universal lullaby. Art stuck with the Arkestra for thirty-six years, right up until his death in 2012. You can hear him and his “space megaphone” delivered offerings to the galaxy on Secrets Of The Sun, way back in 1962. As a homage to that universal-spiritualist’s wanton guidance, Knoel trips the radiant light fantastic, giving praise to the wisdom of the ancients and star people on a seeker’s performance of UFO oscillations, serenaded sentiments and dreamy translucence. It sounds like Cab Calloway and 50s wings being beamed up into Sun Ra’s off-world paradise.
The influence continues with the presence of the Paris scene stalwart and multifaceted (from Dancehall to Makossa, and of course jazz) drummer Chris Henderson, who’s experiences lend a both studied and more untethered freeform feel that moves between swing, big band, Latin, bop and the experimental.
This however is an inter-generational album, with fresher faces of the London scene, the very much in-demand UK keyboardist and versatile pianist Charlie Stacey and Verona-bred electric bassist and oft Arkestra and Knoel Quartet foil, Mikele Montolli. Hailed, quite rightly, as an advanced player, able to adapt to a wealth of styles, Stacey’s touch can evoke the best of those sublime 50s Blue Note recordings, touches of Oscar Peterson and Allen collaborator Terry Adams. The piano both flows with a tinkled busy lightness or strikes the heightened and jarring near-dissonance of freeform jazz; a descending off-tune part here, Cuban show time and bluesy or smoky lounge parts elsewhere: Unstated, yet moving along the action, or taking a soft stroll down the scales.
It’s another musician, part of the luminary brethren, that inspires the Afro-Cuban via Saturn’s rings ‘Makanda’. Paying tribute to a late mentor, Dr. Ken “Makanda” McIntyre, Knoel cooks up a Latin flavoured cool breeze of Havana, Harold Land vibes and R&B grooves: all undulated by sci-fi warbles and flits. A pivotal figure and influence for Knoel, “Makanda” (a name bestowed upon the reeds maestro and composer when playing in Africa, it translates from the Ndekele language as “many skins”, and in the Shona as “many heads”) founded the first ever African American music program in the States in 1971, and had worked with such notable talent as Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and Nat Adderlay. Knoel and friends up the funk and balmy rhythms on this soulful homage to the late great man.
On his part, Knoel’s saxophone squawks, strains, honks and squeaks, and yet also serenades: even soothes. Wilder higher registered beak pecks turn into a near chaos, a cacophony, on the improvisation piece ‘Conversation With The Cosmos’. Coltrane, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton wail in zero gravity, whilst those wild rasps feel almost smoldering and lounge-like on the final mid paced twelve-bar slinky ‘Blu Blues’.
What a stellar set from the Arkestra acolyte, the Marshall and inner circle; and well done to the Night Dreamers for coaxing out this cosmic marvel. The process if you’re new to this label project, is to record the performances direct to tape before cutting on a Sally lathe the final vinyl artifact. In mono, recorded in an analogue studio, the sound is alive, inviting and, well, “celestial”. The experience speaks, communicates, and pushes the perimeters on every note, as a culmination of African American jazz styles are attuned to the stars.
Andrew Hung ‘Deliverance’
(Lex Records) 11th August 2023
With pain, suffering and anguish former Fuck Buttons trick noise maker Andrew Hung finds a cathartic release on his third solo outing, Deliverance. But as that title suggest, the anxieties and sense of isolation and belonging now seem to have slowly dissipated as Hung feels he’s been delivered from the morose and dark fog of depression; although there’s plenty of broody, moody despair and darkened thoughts to wade through before catching the light of hope.
Hope, being set free, the constantly developing artist and producer does seem to have found his creative peace; likening this album to “the end of the chrysalis stage, like breaking free from a previous life.” Not so much reincarnation as a new incarnation, pushed on during lockdowns to mine the deep well of his soul, to face regrets and failings, but also find what’s missing.
An act of self-realization perhaps, Hung conducts a therapeutic session both unflinching and revealing. If the lyrics of ‘Don’t Believe It Now’ are anything to go by, thoughts and mental anguish at one point were truly dark. However, that filtered vapour counters the resigned with a reviving build up. And on the opening tunneled, Sister Bliss and Underworld like, moody turn freedom spin, ‘Ocean Mouth’, Hung faces a list of disappointing traits head on: Almost like taking a breath as the Robert Smith-like palpitations and rave-y Bloc Party velocity of the production avoids suffocation and gravitates towards the techno cathedral of light. Submerged at every turn with recurring references to water, Hung swims and navigates the torrents and tides to find a number of revelations about himself: conquering fear.
The previous solo album, Devastations (a choice album no less in my end of year lists for 2021) looked to the cosmos with a propulsion of electronic, kosmische, motorik, Madchester and synth pop influences, and featured Hung the self-taught singer evoking a mix of Robert Smith (some very cure-esque touches musically too), Karl Hyde, Mark Hollis and The Cry’s Kim Berly. More distressed, gasping and wrenching Hung takes some of those same influences forward on Deliverance, whilst also seeming to whip up a touch of Minny Pops, New Order, Soft Cell and John Foxx on the struggles of isolation and need to belong themed neo-romantic ‘Find Out’.
In another honest cycle of shedding shame and casting away the pain in favour of finding that alluded love “saturation”, ‘Never Be The Same’ builds from synthesized drum pad elements of the 80s German new wave, Factory Records and industrial synth-pop into another unshackled escape towards the light of revelation. I’d throw in Martin Dupont, Tears For Fears and Yazoo to that both pumped and vapourous mix.
Floundering no more, Hung looks to have found his place, his voice too. Deliverance finds him channeling his lamentable, pained, and unsure emotions into something positive and bright with another candid confessional solo album of rave-y synth-pop indie brilliance.
Various ‘Intended Consequences’
(Apranik Records)
With a hellish multitude of flashpoints and distractions across the globe keeping the continuing fight for women’s liberation in Iran off the news rolls, it has become apparent that the Iranians themselves have been left to carry on the struggle with little support. In an ongoing war between the forces of the authoritarian religious state and a younger generation demanding an end to the erosions of there civil liberties and freedoms, the crisis in the country entered a dark bloody chapter last year with the murder in custody of Masha Zhina Amini by the “morality police”.
After a rightful campaign of protest and action at such a heinous crime, a brutal crackdown by the state led to mass arrests and even executions (mostly of male supporters, activists, and usually on trumped up charges). Further restrictions were invoked. And just as horrifying, in the last year, and right up to the last few months, there has been a nationwide spate of deliberate poisonings of schoolgirls (one of the groups who mobilized against the authorities in the wake of Amini’s cruel death) on mass. Defiant still, even in the face of such oppression, the brave women of Iran have strengthened their resolve only further.
In the face of such attacks, clampdowns, the music scene has responded with a strong message of resistance and solidarity. Despite everything, cities like the capital of Tehran have a strong music scene of contemporary artists, composers, DJs and performers working across all mediums, including art (which is probably why so much of the music is also so visceral, descriptive and evocative of imagery). One such collaborative force of advocates, AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah, co-founded the Apranik Records label, a platform for female empowerment. Following this year’s earlier Women Life Freedom compilation, a second spotlight volume delves further into not only the Tehran scene but picks out choice tracks from those female Iranians working outside the country, in such epicenters as London (AZADI.mp3) and Berlin (Ava Irandoost).
Sonic wise it covers everything from d’n’b, trance, deep house and techno to sound art experimentation. The range of moods is just as diverse in that respect, from restlessness to the reflective and chaotic.
Contributions from both Azadikhah (the hand drum rattled d’n’b breaks and spacy, airy trance ‘Perpetual’) and AIDA (the submerged melodious and dreamy techno ‘Ode To Expectations’, which features the final love-predicament film sample, “You know that I love you, I really do. But I have to look after myself too.”) can be found alongside a burgeoning talent pool. The already mentioned London-based producer and singer AZADI.mp3 opens this collection with a filtered female chorus of collective mantra protest, set to a sort of R&B, 2-step and bass throbbed production, on ‘Empty Platform’– just one of many tracks that uses the sounds of a more traditional Iran, especially the daf drum, alongside modern and futuristic warped effects. The sound artist and composer Rojin Sharafi likewise features the rattled rhythms of hand drums and some hidden spindled instrument – like running a stick across railings – on her entrancing kinetic techno ritual of “trauma”, ‘dbkk’.
Abji_hypersun allows the sounds of the environment to seep into her slow-building track of field recordings, collage and breaks (two-stroke scooters buzz by as distant female conversations reverberate on the street). Part jungle breaks pirate radio, part Matthew David, Jon The Dentist and LTJ Bukem, ‘Resist The God Trick’ evokes a tunneled vision of haunted reminisces and resistance in the shadows.
Emsho’s ‘Down Time’ is a rotor-bladed electro mix of Basic Channel and The Chemical Brothers, and Aida Shirazi’s mysterious wind of dark meta ‘R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N’ spells out the rage with a shadowy, near daemonic scripture of wrath and revenge – a gothic synth sinister avenging angel promises that the women of Iran will neither “forget” nor “forgive” their oppressors, torturers and murderers. Farzané seems to evoke the alien, the sci-fi on her experimental, sometimes disturbing dial twisting and crackled ‘Quori’ transmission, and the Berlin-based DJ, video artist and music producer Ava Irandoost draws on Laraaji-like dulcimer tones for her dream mirrored kosmische evocation ‘CINEREOUS’. The Tehran composer, pianist and bassist Ava Rasti draws a close to the compilation with a classical-tinged, harmonic ringed, saddened piano-lingering performance, entitled ‘Eight Night’ – an atmospheric troubled trauma is encapsulated with the deftest of touches.
It might be my own nostalgic penchant for 90s electronic music (my formative years of course), but this series (if we can call it that) could be an Iranian version of the Trance Europe Express compilations brought out during that decade; a treasure trove of discoveries and whole scenes that opened up a world of previously unknown music to many of us not living in the epicenters of North America, the UK and Europe and beyond. Hopefully this latest platform of innovative artists from across the arts will draw the attention it deserves; the message hardly virtuous, in your face, but sophisticated: the very act of female Iranians making a name for themselves despite censorship and bans a sign of empowerment and resistance in itself. Few groups deserve our support (which in the West has been sadly absent) more, but don’t just purchase for the cause but for the musical strives being awakened and produced under tyrannical oppression, and because this is a solid collection of great electronic music.
Nagat ‘Eyoun El Alb’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 25th August 2023
Renowned as one of the greatest, most exceptional voices to have emerged from the golden 40s/50s/60s epoch of Egyptian and the greater Arabian songstresses and divas, Nagat El Seghirah was a rightly revered performer, who’s career spanned more than half a century.
Even in an age rich with accomplished, influential and groundbreaking singers Nagat held her own against such icons as Oum Kalthoum, Fairuz, Warda and perhaps the most celebrated of the lot, the anointed “voice of Egypt” Umm Kulthum. The latter, hailed the “star of the east”, was an influence on the early starter during the burgeoning years of imitation, when Nagat was a child, barely in her teens. Her affectionate appellation, “El Seghirah” or “El Sagheera”, can be translated as “the small”, “the young”, and marks the singer, performer and film star’s young apprenticeship; from entertaining the notable guests that gathered at her father’s (the famed calligrapher Mohamad Hosny) home at the age of five onwards, to her first role in cinema at the age of eight, starring in the 1947 film Hadiya. Hosny was known to push his extensive brood of children from two marriages, sometimes excessively, into various creative careers: Nagat’s half-sister was the famous actress Soad Hosny, her older brother, Ezz Eddin Hosni, a notable composer who helped her own development and natural talent.
During those initial years of development Nagat would interpret songs by such legendary figures as Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Baligh Hamdy and Kamal Al Taweel, but would find both her true and distinctive voice when interpreting the work of the Syrian diplomat-poet Nizar Qabbani. She gained adulation and fans after performing the esteemed poet’s tragic ‘Irja Ilyya’ (“Return To Me”), which is based on his sister who committed suicide rather than enter into an arranged marriage. Plaintive, stark, it rightly struck a chord with the public at the time, with its feminist lyrics and spotlight on forced marriages. It would be become a torchlight for freedom and injustice, with Nagat adding her own improvised original lines during the 1970s.
Born in 1938 but already gaining plaudits by the end of the next decade, into the next, Nagat released her first actual song ‘Why Don’t You Allow Me To Love You’ in 1955; the year she would also be married, for the first time, to a friend of one of her brothers: still only sixteen. It’s no surprise, although in no way a forced marriage, that she could, with a commanding voice, perform Qabbani’s tragedy. That marriage would only last however until the turn of the 1960s; when Nagat went on to marry the Egyptian film director Houssam El-din Mustafa in 1967 (a marriage that lasted an even shorter time). Nagat would remain, in fact seeing as she is still alive, in her eighties, remains unmarried. In recent years, since her singing retirement over twenty years ago, living a semi-reclusive life in Cairo but in poor health, there’s been some contact, even projects floated. Only last year she was featured on the official soundtrack for the streaming service series Moon Knight.
From concert to soundstage with starring roles in the films Black Candles, Beach Of Fun, My Dear Daughter and Dried Tears, Nagat gradually moved from shorter songs to ever more lengthy performances, some of which would last an hour. As time went on the songstress actress would find it harder to find those inspired works to perform. Retiring from film in 1976, Nagat would still persevere with music. And by the time she reached her early forties, in the 1980s, would release this four-track showcase of matured talented performances entitled Eyoun El Alb.
Originally brought out exclusively on cassette (like so much of the Egyptian music market), forty odd years later the reissue vinyl specialists of impeccable tastes (releasing a myriad of jazz titles and nuggets from across the Arabian world and Japan), WEWANTSOUNDS in conjunction with the Arabia and North African crate-digger Disco Abrabesquo (the moniker of the Egyptian, Amsterdam-residing DJ, Moataz Rageb), have pressed it onto vinyl for the first time. If you are a regular reader, or in fact a regular WWS’s follower and buyer, then you will be aware of that label’s previous collaboration with DA, last year’s (although they’ve also released a smattering of Egyptian focused records too over the years) Sharayet El Disco compilation. One notable inclusion on that eye-opening compilation (reviewed by me in May’s Perusal column) was from the legendary Al Massrieen. A much sought after recording outfit, the group’s Hany Shenouda produced the scenic, romantic ‘Ana Bashaa El Bahr’ (or “I Adore The Sea”) finale on this Nagat album. Adoration and yearned dreaminess for a place and time are evoked to Shenouda’s trebly near-psych tremolo guitar and light hand drum patters. Alongside the more lilting and fluted ‘Bahlam Meeak’ (“I Dream With You”), this is one of those examples of Nagat’s shortened form of storytelling romance and heartache. ‘Bahlam Meeak’ is also an example of Nagat’s more lightened, honeyed approach to what is a tinkled serenaded, wafted vision of blossom scented sand dune balladry. It evokes the music of Bacharach and the cool soundtracks of early 60s French and Italian new wave cinema.
Taking up the entirety of Side One, there’s the long form titular performance of heightened drama and searing swirled strings oboe and scuffled trinkets. Over eighteen-minutes of longed romantic gestures, the action pauses repeatedly between undefined sections; allowing the auditorium audience to show its appreciation, encouragement, which they do constantly, even when the music starts back up again. On a Matinee scale, this mini-story, unveiling of lovelorn exultations, but vulnerability and occasional lament, moves like a desert caravan across an Egyptian set, or, sumptuously glides into a Persian court. A fantastic display of sagacious craft, Nagat’s voice never has to rise or push to convey a class piece of theatre and effective yearn of love.
Only half that duration, but still a long track, ‘Fakru’ (“Do You Remember”) is a rumination; the vibrating pools of memoary reflected in the dreamy wobbled effects that permeate this fluctuating lead vocal delivery and prompting chorus of female voices. Classical Cairo, there’s a chink and tinkle of percussion and shimmy-shaking, belly dancing rhythm that luxuriantly accompanies a yearning poetic and sometimes coquettish Nagat on her reminisces. As I said already, this album represents various sides of the enchanting, soulful and also distinctive icon’s vocal presence and range. The long and short: the unmistakable sound of Egypt, but also those influences from abroad too, are melded together on a classy piece of cinematic and poetic mastery. Make room again on those creaking shelving units for another vinyl addition to the collection.
CHELA ‘Diagonal Drift’
(Echodelick – USA, We Here & Now – CA, Ramble Records – Aus, Worst Bassist Records – EU)
In communion with his long-time friend and collaborative foil in the University Challenged trio (alongside Oli Heffernan) Kohhei Matsuda, Ajay Saggar extends his blessed travels along the astral highways and byways with a new venture, CHELA.
Absorbed, imbued and inspired by Indian spiritualism, history and travails, its psychogeography and trauma, both partners in the new direction come together under the Sanskrit word for “disciple”; taken from the verb and root “to serve”, the “Chela” is similar in concept to a student, but implies a more loyal closeness with their teacher. In Hinduism this bond is considered sacred: An apt moniker for such inter-dimensional, afflatus dreamers and acolytes of raga, the new age, psychedlia and kosmische music.
Divine styler Saggar (who is also a member of King Champion Sounds, solos under the Bhajan Bhoy alias, and collaborates with Merinde Verbeck in the Deutsche Ashram duo) and Japanese noisenik Matsuda (most notably a member of the Bo Ningen quartet) spent much of 2022 putting this inaugural baptism together. And so with dedication to their art, the duo have sonically and melodically taken time, given depth to their new mysterious broadcast; that is, broadcasts from the ether, supernatural, uncertain, Fortean and cosmic. Different yet not entirely detached from previous incarnations, fans of both artists will pick up on past signatures, sounds and conceptions. However, they’ve managed to realign those same signatures, tuning into the mystical but often with trepidation and a sense that the noisier elements could consume all in their path.
Think Julius Eastman meets Fennesz we’re told; a good succinct summary. But I’d add a hell of a lot more, including Taylor Deupree and a cosmology of cosmic couriers. The opening ripple in the fabric of time, ‘Flyspray’, is an expanded peregrination of Beautifully tinkled Florian Fricke-like piano hauntings, Ariel Kalma and Syrinx new ageism and various Sky Records pioneers (Asmus Tietchens and Riechman spring to mind), all caught up in analogue wispy wind cacophony of divine rays, the esoteric and Eastern drones. Trippy warped reversals and folds, generator and processors nearly overwhelm the vague evocations of Tony Conrad, Schultz and a springy, but also spoke splayed banjo (which in itself seems to vaguely evoke the Balkans, Greece and strangely, India) on the reverberating ‘Appalachjo’.
In what could be a suggestion of “peace” and “harmony”, or reference to the Japanese town, ‘Heiwa’ is a hummed raga-like hymnal. A stand-up barrel-type piano plonks away from the ether, whilst ambient waves and traces of Dyzan invite heavenly reflection. ‘Ticker’ is a very different proposition. An intense chemistry of signals, beeps, quickened arrpegiator, moody signs of Faust and the sound of the Heart Of Darness are melted with Günter Schickert guitar, heavy acid Gong and various calculations.
‘Tanker’ feels like the most obvious attempt to score the sound of the title’s overbearing object; sounding like a alien freighter, both foreboding and mysterious. A scrawl and flapped ripple of radar and sonar bites into a resonating field of drones and sound waves, fog and guitar.
The final, spiritual and otherworldly track, ‘Worship’, features ghostly Indian voices and visitations from an event, service or chapter in time and history. A melodious piano chimes away in wisps of fanned cosmic mystique and cyclonic radio effects, whilst shades of FSOL, King Creosote (From Scotland With Love period) and Boards Of Canada linger. The video is more illuminating, a sepia film of bedside “worship”, healing for a leader, martyr, and a travelling funeral cortege that takes in rows of witnesses moved to touch, or just be in the essence of a distinguished teacher.
Once again with the cosmic and afflatus, Saggar and Matsuda expand their sound further. Diagonal Drift’s transcendental projection is just that, despite the building intensity and uncertainty, the broadcast noise of krautrock and kosmische styled aerial bends and radio tunings. CHELA is another welcome addition to the two artists oeuvre: one more step on the astral journey of mind-expanding experimentation.
GRAHAM DOMAIN’S RUN-THROUGH OF RECENT AND UPCOMING NEW RELEASES
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THE TELESCOPES ‘Where Do We Begin’
(Tapete Records) (Download only Single)
It seems only vocalist Stephen Lawrie remains from the original group and only his voice reminds of The Telescopes classic sound!
This is the first single taken from forthcoming album Of Tomorrow. As such, it sounds a bit like the House of Love with Lou Reed – a psychedelic song about filling in the hole in your soul with more emptiness – the modern consumer society looking for fulfillment amid the waffle of internet influencers, ‘reality’ celebrity and brand name hypnosis! I await the new album with interest!
MATT SAXTON ‘Freedom’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
This is an electronic track with folktronica leanings that reminds me of John Grant. It’s a delight – like eating your favourite ice cream! Give it a listen while eating a Cornetto!
YOVA ‘Feel Your Fear’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
Unusual pop song from Yova – interesting, odd and compelling! Yova are a duo – with exposure they could be massive!
SALEM TRIALS ‘ESPERS SYC (See Your Crime)’ / ‘End of Level Boss’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Double A Side Single)
Excellent Double A Side from Salem Trials – ‘Espers SYC’ comes across like the Fall playing a speeded-up Joy Division ‘Exercise One’ – some nice jarring chords and fried bacon rhythm!
With singalongs like ‘reasonable doubt my arse’ it could become a staple at Strangeways Indie disco! The crime? Presumably using your intuition (ESP) – contravening Section 7 of the State Controlled Thought Act 2023.
‘End of Level Boss’ meanwhile conjures up the ghost of Ian Curtis dancing to James Brown after the sacked JB’s were replaced by a funky Sunn O))) – Mesmeric!
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OCEANS ‘Dreamers in Dark Cities’
(Bandcamp) (Vinyl/DL)
There are a few bands named Oceans but this particular band hail from Melbourne Australia. They sound like they have been listening to a lot of 1980’s indie music like the Sound, the Chameleons, New Model Army, Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, Slowdive, The Scars.
‘Pure’ sounds like a poppier Pale Saints and is perhaps the best song on the album. “I just want to feel alive” he cries as the music rises in life affirming sonic radiance! ‘Apart’ reminds me of the Scars with touches of Ride and Pale Saints. ‘Feels Like You’ hints towards Slowdive, MBV and Ride.
‘Mike Tysong’ sounds like New Model Army circa ‘The Ghost of Cain’ but with vocals akin to Adrian Borland (the Sound of ‘The Lions Roar’ fame). ‘Soft’ has hints of The Chameleons guitar sound combined with vocals akin to Lush! ‘Look Into My Eyes’ employs the 3 / 4 rhythm beloved of The Cocteau Twins circa ‘Treasure’. An album of youthful energy and life affirming beauty. The songs are energetic, well-constructed and well-produced. I like the album, but the band need to bring more of their own creativity to the table so they sound like themselves rather than the sum of their influences. Once they find their own sound, they will be magnificent. They are part way there and I predict great things for them in the future.
CREEP SHOW ‘Yawning Abyss’
(Bella Union) (CD/Download Album)
Make no mistake, John Grant is a genius! As half of Creep Show he provides the moments of sheer joy! ‘Bungalow’ comes over like a song that could have been on any of his brilliant solo albums, post ‘Queen of Denmark’. It’s a fantastic vocal, the music dark, funny, sexy, – electronic music at its best and a good song to boot! Elsewhere we find him singing strange rhymes on the title track ‘Yamning Abyss’ – a song that grows on you with each play.
The band Wrangler are the other half of Creepshow. Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder sharing vocal duties on such tracks as ‘Moneyback’ – “You want your money back / I didn’t think so”! Overall, a fine return from Creep Show who are doing a short tour of the UK over the summer!
JEAN MIGNON ‘AN/AL’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Album)
Raucous debut album by New York based Johnny Steines. A mixture of high energy garage punk and high-speed rock and roll – it sounds like a live album such is the energy contained in the grooves!
‘Tackled By Men’ recycles parts of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, whilst ‘Canadian Exit’ has echoes of Warsaw’s ‘Failures’. If he can produce this excitement in a live-setting he willsurely make his own impact! Primal Rock and Roll that screams from the speakers andexcites like a high-speed car chase!
Key Tracks: All of them!
The BORDELLOS ‘Starcrossed Radio’
(Metal Postcard Records) (Download Album)
The latest release by St Helens finest is a cabinet of curiosities containing some wonderful lo-fi gems and hitherto lost standards!
Beginning with the glam stomp of ‘Attack of The Killer B-Sides’ – name checking great B- Sides by the likes of The Smiths, Stone Roses, The Beatles, Billy Fury, Shangri-Las, New Order, Rolling Stones, Mersey Beats etc… All delivered in a Mark Smith type drawl. Like any music fan, flipping a 45 over and discovering a great B Side was exciting and would lead to more investigation of the artist’s music.
‘Never Learn’ sounds like a lost standard to me – reminding of Morrissey when he was good, the accordion sound giving it a shade of the Pogues! The nice melody is under-pinned by what sounds like a balloon deflating, a synth or a cat being slowly trod on mixed with static and silence! Experimental brilliance!
‘Free New Music Day’ meanwhile takes the sound of the Doors Texas Radio and the Big Beat and transfers it to Northern England where you can ’take a cut price trip to the stars – singing Hallelujah in Karaoke bars’ – poetry from the streets Jim Morrison could only aspire to!
Other highlights include the strange melody picked out on guitar on ‘Sunk and Screwed’, which could be the theme to a weird kids cartoon! Oddly disturbing! I’m still humming it! ‘Vicious Circle’ could be a single. ‘Hurting Kind’ sounds like a lost Beach Boys campfire surf song – Brilliant!
The album ends with the sublime ‘Life Love and Billy Fury’ – a part electronic song where the melody or maybe some of the chord changes put me in mind of New Order without actually sounding like them! Great lyrics – another ‘lost standard’!
This album is one to treasure, an Aladdin’s cave of eclectic life affirming songs. The Bordellos are the fine web that holds the stars in place!
Our Daily Bread 569: Ali Murray & Cornelius Corvidae, Foil, Conrad Schnitzler & Ken Montgomery, Silver Moth…
April 7, 2023
GRAHAM DOMAIN’S REVIEWS SUITE
__SINGLES/EPS__
Ali Murray and Cornelius Corvidae ‘Split EP’
(Dead Forest Records)
As the name suggests this is an EP split between two artists playing two songs each.
Ali Murray hails from the beautiful windswept Isle of Lewis and vocally sounds like a cross between Elliott Smith and Andy Shauf. On some of his other releases he harnesses a shoegaze-like sonic template. Here he adopts a stripped-back sound of acoustic and electric guitar and organ. Standout track is the beautiful ‘Wish the Bones Away’ with its poetic lyrics and melancholic gothic strangeness. ‘Spirit of Unknowing’ meanwhile, uses acoustic guitar to great effect on an atmospheric ballad that combines the phrasing of John Grant with the sadness of Elliot Smith. Two songs of beauty and wonder!
Cornelius Corvidae hails from Minnesota, USA and inhabits two songs of cosmic Americana. ‘Silver Flower (Kali’s Invitation)’ employs acoustic picked guitar on a bleak ballad, all dark imagery and campfire ghost-story shadow. ‘Shiva in the Blood Orchard’ meanwhile, uses picked acoustic guitar set against Tudor-like keyboard melodies (reminiscent of the Moody Blues) on a dark folk ballad. Two artists, four great songs!
Foil ‘Portal’
(Jolt Music)
Foil (AKA singer and producer Helly Manson) releases her new single this month. Taken from the upcoming album On the Wing, the song begins like Steeleye Span with multi tracked folkish female vocals before a synth plays the same pattern over and over again accompanied by a cowbell rhythm! It lasts just 1 minute and 33 seconds and sounds like a demo for a song not finished and barely started! Still, there’s nothing else quite like it!
Juppe ‘Fade’
(Soliti)
Juppe hails from Helsinki in Finland (the happiest country in the world)! Of the singles theme he says ‘it’s very hard to get a place to rent here in Helsinki if you don’t have good credit! It’s very easy to fade away.’ With two fingers up to the Man – Juppe looks like Bob Mortimer and harnesses the sound of the Devils music Jamiroquai!
Bitter Defeat ‘Terrific Effort EP’
(Bandcamp)
This is the second EP from the New Zealand indie rock band following last years Minor Victory EP. Comprising 4 songs of guitar pop-rock that sit somewhere between the Lemon Heads and late-period Buzzcocks! Lead song ‘Sugar Blind’ is a catchy guitar driven pop song complete with Cure-like background vocal refrain! ‘Falling Down’, meanwhile has shades of the Charlatans with its driving organ sound! One to watch!
Nivis ‘Into the Void’ EP
(6415 Records)
The EP features 4 songs of pop-rock from the German indie-pop band. Lead track ‘Rain on a Funeral March’ is a catchy pop song that resonates more with each play. All four songs are well-produced, commercial pop-rock that remind me of people like Cyndi Lauper or Nena (of 99 Red Balloons fame). It’s the sort of music that was popular in the mid 1980’s! Shiny but not new!
Neon Kittens ‘Loving Your Neighbours Wife’ b/w ‘Marilyn Mansion (Where Horror Lives)
(Metal Postcard Records)
The new single from Neon Kittens, combines the white funk bass-lines of A Certain Ratio with Eno / Byrnes My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to produce K-Funk – the crunchy funk sound of biscuits out of their packet! With these hot cheesy bread rhythms, even Lego figures with botox can learn to smile again! Set to produce a water slide of elastic-legged banana dancing up and down the country!
B-side ‘Marilyn Mansion’ employs the sound of Early Gang of Four with the attack of Wire and a deadpan female Einar (Sugarcubes) on a twisted tale of non murder locations and funking in cars!
Draag ‘Mitsuwa’
A wonderful summery single from the LA Electro-Shoegaze band, taken from their forthcoming album Dark Fire Heresy. Acoustic guitars and subtle synths give way to chiming guitars and organ with multi-tracked harmonic female vocals! It reminds me very much of Lush in their prime! One to watch!
_____ALBUMS_____
Conrad Schnitzler & Ken Montgomery ‘CAS-CON 11 Konzert in der Erloserkirche, Ost-Berlin, 3.9.1986’
(Bureau B) 12th May 2023
This is a live concert recorded in East Germany on 3.9.1986 where the music of German electronic experimental musician Conrad Schnitzler was mixed live by American collaborator Ken Montgomery. This was at a time when the Berlin Wall still stood and the GDR required the issuing of a special state permit for a live concert. This concert was promoted locally by word of mouth and went ahead illegally (without permit), where it was recorded and issued by an East German underground label on cassette.
Now fully restored, the concert has been issued for the first time on CD, Vinyl and as a Digital Download! Consisting of 6 tracks of austere serious yet playful experimental electronic music, it leaves little impression on first listen. With repeat plays however, the charms of the music reveal themselves, not so much in melody but in atmosphere and approach. It encapsulates the icy chill and drama of Delia Derbyshire, Bowie, Eno, Tomita, Cluster and early Popol Vuh! An interesting suite of music – one that becomes an essential listen the more you hear it!
FFO: Delia Derbyshire, Cluster, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Bowie, Tomita.
Volatile Youth ‘Post Falls, Idaho’
(Rummage Sale Records – Bandcamp)
The album begins with the song ‘California’ sounding like a strung-out Lou Reed if produced by Jesus and Mary Chain! ‘Love Like A Thousand Guns’ is superb low-fi Psychedelia with the backward vocal effect, once favoured by Siouxsie, that you don’t hear anymore since the onset of Digital! ‘She’s Starting to See the Flame’ is a country-tinged song sounding like Nick Drake if he had fronted the Byrds after they turned country-rock!
Overall, this is a fine album that is perhaps a touch too low-fi for its lofty ambitions! The songs are commercial and remind me of various bands and artists – among them Lou Reed, the Only Ones, the Byrds in their Gram Parsons era, Dennis Wilson and the gothic feel of Mazzy Star.
If it had been made by someone with a higher profile, say Bright Eyes, and recorded on decent sound equipment, it would undoubtedly have gained a wide audience. Hopefully it will be heard by many and receive the recognition it deserves.
Fhae ‘Sombre Thorax’
(4000 Records)
This is a wonderful album of ethereal, ambient, dream-folk-pop that ebbs and flows like the tides and inhabits its own world of subtle beauty. Sometimes, mists of the sea seem to creep into the music and the edges of reality become blurred, the music shape shifting into another dimension!
Fhae (20 year old Australian Ellena Ramsay) produces music in the vein of Julianna Barwick or Grouper – some of it lovely with multi tracked harmonies (like Barwick) and some of it (such as ‘Drain’ and ‘Man’) obscure in its strangeness (like Grouper)! There are some really beautiful and compelling tracks on the album, such as ‘Earth’, ‘Emergency’, ‘Love You’, ‘Comb’ and ‘Stuck’. A fantastic debut album, I can’t wait to hear more!
Stanley J. Zappa & Simo Laihonen with Suvadeep Das ‘Dance of the Moving Goal Posts’
(Ramble Records)
US saxophonist Stanley J Zappa (nephew of Frank Zappa) and Finnish drummer and percussionist Simo Laihonen recorded this album of 7 pieces of free improvised jazz live in Helsinki in 2018. The final track features Suvadeep Das on darbuka adding an extra percussive element!
It’s a lively set with the Sax sparring with the percussion throughout. If you enjoy free improv jazz, you may well enjoy this lively concert – give it a listen!
Nico Paulo ‘Nico Paulo’
(Forward Music Group)
This is a wonderful summery album of Bacharach-like melodies by the Portuguese-Canadian singer. A truly remarkable debut of ten self-composed wonderful songs that sound like standards.
Her voice is a bewitching combination of Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood). Musically it covers a wide spectrum of Tropicalia, Folk, Americana, Jazz and Pop. Her voice conveys real emotion and depth that is bounced off the beautiful melodies and lyrics.
There are so many fantastic songs on here that it’s hard to single out the standout tracks, but they include ‘Time’, ‘Lock Me Inside’, ‘The Master’, ‘Learning My Ways’, ‘Now or Never’.
A future classic that will undoubtedly have a far-reaching influence on stars not yet born! Is it too early to award it – Debut Album of the Year?
FFO: Weyes Blood, Aldous Harding, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Beach House, Rumer.
Silver Moth ‘Black Bay’
(Bella Union) 21st April 2023
Silver Moth are a one-off ‘band-experiment’ made up of 7 members from various bands drawn together post-lockdown by a strong desire to make music again and see what happens! The band include Mogwai guitarist Stuart Braithwaite, Elisabeth Elektra, Evi Vine and Ben Roberts.
The first track ‘Henry’ is 7 minutes of atmospheric shoegaze guitar music with a girl singer whose cracked voice here sounds like Beth Gibbons at her emotional best!
‘The Eternal’ follows, not the Joy Division song, but a bleak winter hymnal resonating like sacred music for the End of Times!
‘Mother Tongue’ follows suite with its cinematic drama and pagan prayer-like plea for reconciliation and survival.
Final track ‘Sedna’ has the same sacred vibe – like Dead Can Dance played by Fields of The Nephilim.
Cinematic tracks full of atmosphere and grandeur! 45 minutes of Bliss! It may become the holy grail of lost albums in future years – if it slips under the radar!
FFO: Slowdive, Pale Saints, Howling Bells, Daughter, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Fields of the Nephilim.
A Little About The Writer:
Manchester-based musician and artist Graham Domain joined the team in 2022. The offspring of Scott Walker and David Slyvian, Graham has charmed us with his plaintive adroit music for years; releasing music for the iconic cult multinational platform Metal Postcard Records.
Our Daily Bread 566: Swans, Halo Maud, Night Noise Team, The Mary Onettes, Heartworms
March 27, 2023
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Picks
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Swans ‘Paradise Is Mine’
(Mute)
The taster track of the new Swans album is upon us and is a track of longitude, going on for nine minutes. Maybe going on is the wrong description. Maybe gently floating, drifting like a thought on the edge of a maelstrom of seduction and unease; a song that in noway outstays its welcome. In fact it kindly invites you in for tea and biscuits, offers you a choice of what you want to watch and then twiddles its moustache in a Dick Dastardly way when your back is turned. Yes, “Paradise Is Mine” is a crafty little bugger of a song. I wonder, have the Swans pieces of high quality art been described as “a crafty bugger”? Probably not. I would not describe it like that to their faces as they are a bit scary; as in fact is this seduction of unease.
Halo Maud ‘Catch The Wave’
(Heavenly Records) Available Now
‘Catch The Wave’ is a rather beautiful song, especially the Dawn Version, which is the same beautiful song with mostly just vocals and guitar and without the aural sugar coating of synths and vocal effects. The gift without the wrapping dear friends as Halo Maud really does not need any wrapping or enhancing: it is like putting eyeliner on the Mona Lisa, she really does not need it. She’s perfect as she is.
Night Noise Team ‘Little Shocks’
17th March 2023
‘Little Shocks’ is a delightfully beautiful slice of well-written electro pop; intelligent lyrics and beautiful melody with quirky catchy synth lines, which nowadays is indeed a bit of a rare thing. Yes indeed this in fact a song (did you notice I said song and not a track) that is worthy to be released and not dropped, which is sadly the modern way; in my old days the only experience of being dropped by a record label was when I was being kicked off their roster. But this is a lovely little release, and I expect if the Night Noise Team releases an album it will be equally as lovely.
Ghosts On TV ‘Sunshine’
(Soliti) Available Now
A palette wash of sonic endeavor; a throw away memory caught in the wish of a recurring dream, Ghosts On TV supply us with a brief glimpse of daylight in these dark times with the appropriately titled “Sunshine”. A Flying Saucer Attack like pop covered chocolate delight of sadness and hope; a whispered sweet nothing sound-tracked by heavenly feedback, this is a lesson in how to write alternative pop.
The Mary Onettes ‘Pearl Machine’
(Welfare Sounds) Available Now
The Mary Onettes have just released a new track and it is indeed a bit of a gem, a pearl in fact. Maybe it is why they have titled this Cure like stroll of instrumental solitude “Pearl Machine”, a work of beauty and retreat that promises great things for their forthcoming album.
bigflower ‘Anything’
(Self-Release) Available Now
Another month another slab of hypnotic dark dense guitar beauty from bigflower, and “Anything” is indeed a thing of great beauty; the sound of sinking hope; a soundtrack of loss and remembrance that once again screams out to be included in some movie blockbuster. For Ivor makes music that has such a wide cinemascope to it, that completely engulfs you, and leaves you in a state of blissed out bohemia.
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys ‘Howl’
(Unique Records) Available Now
I love this track. It’s an unhinged point of no return of a song. A track that is adventurous, sexy and is willing to argue its own point of view; song that takes great pleasure in poking you with a phallus shaped slice of no wave glamour. A track that will bewitch you and entice you into its lair, before happily hacking you to little bits with its pure originality and individuality. A gem.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw ‘Backburden’
(Big Richard Records) Available Now
Another blast of jerky punk rock: yes another. There seems to be a deluge of jerky punk rock coming my way lately, and 90% of it is very good. And this is one of the 90%, so I will indeed take the time out and cast my appraisal. Not that anyone really cares what I think. And why on earth should they, as everyone has their own musical taste, and me saying that I like it a great deal does not mean that you will. But I enjoyed Daisy Chainsaw and Elastica and The Slits and this is in the same ballpark – as an American would say. But with myself being British I will say Cricket ground. And this is very British and very quirky and lovely and punky, and I love it.
//ALBUMS-EPS//
Heartworms ‘A Comforting Notion EP’
(Speedy Wunderground) 24th March 2023
Have you ever watched a cat admire itself in a mirror and slowly become freaked out and scared of its own reflection, backing off as slinkily as possible, giving an air of nonchalant sexiness, purring seductively as it turns and leaves the room to go and make a kill in the cold and wintery back garden. You can do nothing but admire the blackness and beauty of nature unfurling its wonderous inner self; leaving itself naked and open. Well this four track EP is an aural equivalent; it’s dark, bewitching and beautiful, and leaves an uneasy tingling in your soul. The sound of Portishead visiting itself in an insane asylum, wonderfully unhinged, and unhingedly beautiful.
LMNOP (aka dONW7) ‘LMNO3’
Available Now
Everybody needs some lo-fi power pop in their lives. Well they do when it is simply as life affirming as this album is. 22 tracks of analogue tape beauty; songs that dazzle and twirl and make you remember the joy of a pop melody and the classic guitar riff, be it the “Heatwave” break of “Semi Circular”, or the Thin Lizzy like soloing on “Y”, or the Big Star worthiness of “Wanna Write A Letter To You”, truly a pop gem, and believe me this album is full of pop gems including the wannabe rock stardom of the excellent “Garbage”. LMNOP are truly a marvel of pop.
Smashing Red ‘II’ EP
(Metal Postcard Records) Available Now
Now when an EP is kicked off with a track that borrows a hybrid riff off Ringo’s “Back Off Boogaloo”, Warrants “Cherry Pie” and “Number 1 Dominator” by Top (remember them? An unsuccessful band from Liverpool once tipped for great things) you know it is going to be good. And indeed it is; five tracks that dip their toes in indie, folk and pop, at times making one think of the excellent Comet Gain, especially on “I Luv U” – a rather fetching song about trying to make in the music industry. And at other times, a mellow Kinks “Magic Garden” and the Ray Davies tribute “He’s No Angel”. So if you are looking for five well-written songs about life …please look no further.
$t33d$_uv_LUV ‘Ballads For Bros’
(Metal Postcard Records) Available Now
$t33d$_uv_LUV is maybe the worst band name I have ever come across. In fact, is not even a good password. Well, it is a good password safety wise, but one you have no chance in remembering and most bands want to be remembered; it’s not a name that will slip off the tongue of any alt DJs out there, and in fact could well put off blog writers writing about you as you really do not want to be typing that out in a review. Luckily I’m of sterner stuff and do not mind typing it out on occasion, and that is a shame, as Ballads For Bros is a good album and could actually gain some attention.
It’s an album I’ve listened to a number of times and is as strange as the band name. It’s not often an album starts with a AOR ballad; ‘Next To Me’ is quite lovely and is something that Lennon might have recorded for his Plastic Ono Band album if he had had a happy childhood, or something Todd Rundgren might have released in the early 70s. It’s a bit of a stunner.
The next track ‘Rock (Your City) Tonight’ is a delight of Royal Trux madness. It’s funny and it rocks. And those two stunners are the best two tracks on the album.
The third track ‘Brothers In Arms (Pt.2)’ thankfully does not sound like Dire Striates or have anything to do with their tastefully plucked guitars. But saying that, the track does actually have tastefully plucked guitars, and is another well-written ballad. Then the album gets a bit strange with music that could be lift music from Dr Who (‘D2TD’), and Add N To X like porn music for computers (‘Zoom On The Can’). So a strange and enjoyable listen overall and if they went down the AOR path further could be the next Journey or Chicago.
A word about the Author of these reviews::
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. Far too many projects, asides and oddities to mention, but his latest album is Songs For Cilla Black (released on Think Like A Key Music) threatened to trouble some online alternative chart for a week on Amazon – so things must be looking up.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases.
The Perusal #40: Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters, Moonlight Benjamin, BONDO, Kety Fusco, Antti Lötjönen…
February 15, 2023
Upcoming and recent albums in review
Dominic Valvona
Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
24th February 2023
PHOTO CREDIT: Cedrick Nöt
No one quite channels the “iwa” spirits and musical, drum-beating ceremony of Haitian vodou like one of its most exhilarating priestesses, Moonlight Benjamin. Returning with her atmospheric and grinded-scuzz swamp-blues foil Matthis Pascaud for a third manifestation of hungered electrified vodou-blues, Moonlight roughs up and adds a wider tumult of energy to her vocally incredible and dirt music imbued sound of deep southern roots, West African and Hispaniola influences: an all-round Francophone sound you could say, from Louisiana to Mali and, of course, her homeland of Haiti.
Born into this mortal world in tragic circumstances, an orphan at childbirth, the poetically named Moonlight started out singing hymns in the Christian Church before crossing the paths of vodou musicians, acolytes and picking up on the sounds of Western rock music on the radio. But with an eventual move to France, Moonlight would also take up the study of jazz. A return in 2009 to Haiti and vodou initiation, Moonlight became a priestess of an age-old religion, practice originally brought to Haitian shores by slaves from West and Central Africa.
Famous for its worked-up rhythmic rituals and exaltations, drama, the sounds and expressive vocalization of vodou was coupled to a myriad of bluesy, rocking, psychedelic, country and desert styles when the guitarist Pascaud entered the picture. Two critically favored, compelling and adventurous albums and numerous gigs later this sonic and, most importantly, vocal partnership now summons up something very special, soulful, spiritual and charged on Wayo.
Translating into a “scream of pain”, the title-track finds Moonlight commanding strength yet also emotional as a tempered, melodious if raw gumbo of New Orleans and Tuareg post-punk swamp blues buzzes around her. That voice, its range from earthiness to squeals and the deeply welled, is hard to compare with anyone else. Melodic with plenty of familiar tunes, those beautiful if on occasion riled tones evoke fleeting grasps of Joan Armatrading, Ami Kate, Brittany Howard, Cold Specks and Big Joanie. Yet this is Afro-Haitian soul, R&B, the venerable and raging conversing with French chanteuse and Portuguese fado; with camel motion traverses and panoramic spells in desert Westerns.
For his part, Pascaud’s sprung, tremolo and gristly guitar, with both a grinding coil and velocity and more melting wanes, stirs up a sinewy flex of Tinariwan, Modu Moctar, Hendrix and Mark Mulholland’s collaboration with another Haiti native, the poet-artist Frankétiene.
With the addition of a bass guitar and drums elements of Boukmen Eksperyans and the Vodoun Band Haiti beat comes into contact with soul revue backbeats, post-punk and cult rock ‘n’ roll.
All together it’s a real rich, ever-changing landscape of driven, slapping, bobbed and stonking rhythms and powerful, rough and yet elegant vocals with a sense of both pain and magic. As wild as it is composed, Moonlight Benjamin takes the vodou spirits back home to Africa, before returning, via the bayou, to Haiti on another fraught electrified album of divine communication.
Antti Lötjönen ‘Circus/Citadel’
(We Jazz) 24th February 2023
During the initial pandemic wave of April 2020 the double-bassist maestro Antti Lötjönen released his debut proper as bandleader to a quintet of exciting Finnish jazz talent.
That album, Quintet East, with its monograph vignettes and flexible free-play of be bop, Sonny Clark, the left bank and Bernstein-like musical NYC skylines, is improved upon by the ensemble’s follow-up, Circus/Citadel. With a title both inspired and imbued by the Romanian-born, German-language titan of 20th century poetry, Paul Celan, the issues of a tumultuous world on the precipice of disaster is channeled through a controlled chaos and a reach for the old and new forms of expressive jazz.
The seasoned Lötjönen, whose provenance includes stints in the Five Corners Quintet, 3TM and Aki Rissanen Trio, reels back in the talents of the alto and baritone saxophonist Mikko Innanen (part of the We Jazz label supergroup Kamo Saxo), tenor saxophonist Jussi Kannaste (a fellow 3TM band mate), trumpet player Verneri Pohjola and drummer Joonas Rippa on another highly impressive outing.
More coherent than the last time around however, the themes of the day, the protestations are galvanized and turned inside-out across a concrete vine swinging, guarded and maddening landscape. Celan’s harrowing verse, consumed as is right with WWII and the Holocaust, his Jewish struggles, is reflected by those old and contemporary challenges with a musicality that evokes the social conscious jazz records of Marcus Belgrave, Sam Rivers and Phil Ranelin. And yet the opening title-track three-part act and its couplet of suites also serenade and offer a lilted New Orleans fanfare, suggestive of America’s earlier Southern States jazz roots. That first trilogy of tracks is a journey in itself; from Dixie and Savoy Jazz (Gigi Gryce for one) to those musical, theatrical sounds of Bernstein and early Miles Davis, through to the farmyard percussion and wilder rushes of sax and trumpet on the final act. It feels at times like an avant-garde or free-jazz modernist score to Animal Farm. With all the connotations, metaphors that title implies, the circus of madness and fortress mentality are played off against each other.
Each suite breaks off into expressive groups, separations, with perhaps the horn section together or double bass and drums reacting to each other in almost isolation. Numerous versions of this practice, these little breakdowns, combos can be heard throughout; all played with expanding minds and adroit skill, dexterity and, that word again, expression. And there are some both playful (is that a “pop goes the weasel” riff on the activist-stoked ‘Defenestration’?) and wailing surprises to be heard on this bounded mix of the quickened, the controlled and purposeful.
I’m always building the We Jazz label up; always aggrandising that Helsinki based hub of Scandinavian jazz. But really, this is an enriching, immersive and artful start to the label’s 2023 calendar with a classic jazz album in the making. I reckon it will be one of the year’s best.
Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters ‘Abri Cyclonique’
(Real World) 24th February 2023
Suffused, elevated and morphed with Parisian-based Doctor L’s jazz, electronica Francophone new waves and trip-hop, the ancestral Guadeloupe rural folk traditions of Léwòz and one of its renowned modern practitioners-deliverers Moïse Polobi is transformed into an environmental traverse. As the good doctor has proscribed so well for Les Amazon D’Afrique and the Mbongwana Stars, the roots of another form are, with subtle wondering and sophistication, given a unique sound experience.
At the heart of the 69-year-old farm worker and lumberjack’s earthy song music is a three-drum circle of rhythms. A disciple since being introduced by his Léwòz practicing mother at the age of twelve to this West African originated ritual, dance and music Polobi is a master of the Gwaka, a family of hand drums of all different sizes, used for various effects and parts – the “Buula” for example, being the largest of that family, used as the central rhythm. The “Djeme” is another; a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet shaped drum, its origins tied to the 15th century Mali Empire and its spread across the region; taken up by those unfortunate souls catered off to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade.
As an ancestor of those slaves, brought over to the French colonized Guadeloupe archipelago to harvest sugar (among other roles) on the plantations, Polobi’s identity is very much on show here; a call both pleading and poetically ached as this group of islands continues to be attached to France as a “region” – as a consequence, part of the EU too – despite decades of independence campaigns. And that’s despite the Colonist masters loss of the Caribbean islands during its own revolution to the British (the first of two attempts to take them). Yet with certain conditions, it remains a semi-autonomous part of France to this day. This means there’s a strong French culture, especially language wise, with French being the official dialect, but Creole really the more popular used amongst the locals. It’s alluded to in the lyrics on this new album’s trippy ‘Bouladje’ song: “What language should I speak? This one says speak to me in Creole/ This one says speak to me in French. Music is in French/ As children we sang in Creole/ Let’s talk to make ourselves understood.”
The call and response, Cándido-like hand drums rattling and rolled (we’re told Doctor L replaced the drums here with Cuban rhythms) ‘Neg Africa’ makes that connection to displacement from the homeland obvious; sounding as it does like an African homage musically and atmospherically.
To my own ignorance I never knew that there was as Tour de Guadalupe in the cycling calendar. Won by the promising Colombian talent of the same name ‘Camargo’ uses a mirage of nuzzled distant trumpet, slightly elliptical drumming and electronic processes to call for the locals to get energized and to win back the “yellow jersey”; a boost for Guadalupe’s population to take back their own destiny, to feel bolstered with a can-do attitude. Polobi it must be said is a cycling fan, so it can be read as a tribute to that Central American cycling star too.
As important as self-determination is and the struggle to preserve traditions, this album is as much about Polobi’s response to his natural environment. Named after the terrifying threats and realties of cyclones – though also a metaphor we’re told for the “resilience” of the music and for resistance – Abri Cyclonique pays a real tribute to Polobi’s little oasis out in the wilds of the archipelago’s Grande Savane region. ‘La Lézad’, with its spiral wafts of jazzy horn, drum scuttles and Gnawa-like vocals is named after a local river, whilst the mysterious Afro-Caribbean, Terry Hall meets Black Mango ‘Driv’ meanders lyrically through the geography towards the woods.
Biodiversity in sonic form, with the flora, fauna, crops and wildlife permeating the sophisticated interlaced production, Polobi’s rustic idyll comes alive: as much a barrier to the infringing forces of big business as a call to return back to a simpler life in harmony with nature.
A very personal album, this is the first to be released under Polobi’s own name. Previously the Guadalupe star has performed with his Indestawa Ka band, releasing eight albums and performing internationally. But this cyclonic whirlwind is something different, a galvanised, electrified and bolstered earthy and magical vision of his country’s past, present and future. It’s one of the most interesting albums yet in 2023, with a sound that reboots folkloric traditions in the face of an ever-encroaching modernity.
Kety Fusco ‘THE HARP, Chapter 1’
(Floating Notes Records) 3rd March 2023
“The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp, it will still be her, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.
And with that Kety Fusco elicits, pulls, scratches, picks and manipulates both liminal and suggestive notes, textures, timbres, qualities and evocations from her choice instrument on the first of a three-chapter journey in harp exploration. But as that opening quote states, this is nothing less than an “evolution”; a post-classical transformation in which the harp, though present and familiar, is pulled into realms of serialism, soundscaping and futurism: all that history forgotten, or at least erased, in pursuit of innovation and the new.
This means certain avant-garde practices and non-musical materials, processes being brought in to the equation. Hairpins, stones, wax have all been used in the past on Fusco’s often-improvised performative compositions, peregrinations and suites. To further distance the harp from its classical, folk and majestic roots, Fusco uses an electrified soundboard of effects and a database library of digital sounds she’s collected over the years. On this nineteen-minute, more or less seamless journey, the Italian artist is said to have even used a vibrator – banging it against that already mentioned soundboard. Such devices do indeed change the scope of the instrument, making it almost abstract, recondite, the source hidden aurally.
Fusco uses both an 80-kilo wooden harp and a carbon electric harp on Chapter 1 in the new series – chapters 2 and 3 appearing annually over the next three years –, which across its duration passes through the states of elegy, the disturbing, the supernatural and diaphanous.
With an impressive CV of study, accolades and notable performances at festivals, events, even the Swiss parliament, Fusco knows her instrument, theory and practice inside-out. And so whilst there’s a spirit of experimentation and improvisation, Fusco knows exactly what she’s doing, implying and creating.
Released in the run-up to this album a short excerpt, ‘2072’, alluded to the premonition year of Fusco’s death! A Cassandra perhaps, or maybe told this date by a fortuneteller, a meeting with destiny, a preparation for death is congruously pulled form out of the whole piece. The melody is a funeral elegy, destined to carry Fusco over into the next world. Not so much a cascade, as the waves of purposeful picked notes are allowed to ring out each time, given a little space before the next iteration, there’s a sense of some kind of watery flow; a peace of mind with naturalistic stirrings. And yet there is that sadness too, emanating from airy mystery.
No surprises that Fusco has previously conjured up a horror soundtrack, as there’s a constant feeling of the shadowy, even eerie throughout much of the rest of this suite. Especially in the opening passages, I can hear hints of Lucrecia Dalt. Voice-like sounds, both apparitional and almost esoterically holy, stir whilst granular and clearer but mysterious drones and melodies start to build. Glissando and legato notes simultaneously seem light and yet loaded. The atmospheres that are produced move between the chthonian, the vaporous, airy and metallic. Because whilst there’s melody, a rhythm at times, the sound turns more industrial near the end with a film and rotor-like abrasion of steel and wire.
At other times there’s moments of ambience, a sprinkle of starry calculus and reflective stillness.
The harp has seldom sounded so removed, different; Fusco at one, entwined with her harps in a challenging performance that stretches the limits of this usually synonymous heavenly instrument. Where she goes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m sure it will be a whole different experience in sound and stringed exploration that pushes the envelope.
Za! ‘Za! & La Transmegacobla’
3 Phaz ‘Ends Meet’
(Via Discrepant)
An electrified double-bill from the discrepant portal of outlier labels this month, with albums from the Iberian (but worldly reaching) Za! duo and friends and the singular electronic-percussive global beat-maker 3 Phaz.
The first of these finds the Spanish underground favourites Za! in a “tri-state” union with the experimental Catalan Cobla wind quartet La Megacobla and the “trans-folk” duo of Tarta Relena. All together in one space they pool their resources into one, almost exhaustive, opus of controlled chaos and polygenesis musical abandon.
A Kabbalah, a cult that you might actually want to join – willing to sip the spiked kool aid with enthusiasm -, whole branches of Mediterranean dances (from the West Bulgarian quick-quick-slow-quick-quick metric beat Kopanista, to the complex bustling and cheerful Flamenco style of Buleria and the dance in a circle, Catalan, Sardana), folk traditions and sounds from atavistic realms are transported into a colourful vortex of psych, prog, krautrock, heavier riffage and heavy meta(l).
The whole is both crazy and life affirming; a burst of energy and spasmodic cross-pollination. It’s as if Zappa dropped acid in The Master Musicians Of Jajouka’s tea; a heady mix of Anatolian-Turkey, North Africa, Moorish Spain, Eastern Europe and The Levant mixed with hippie ideology and freewheeling cosmic fantasies. At any onetime I can hear snatches, a gaggale of Dakhu Brakha, Elektro Hafiz, Elias Rahbani, Crystal Fighters, Jethro Tull, Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Hebrew, the Medieval, the Tibetan and Moroccan.
A mizmar of the heralded and the theatrical, this combined effort of wild disciplines, influences and practices is a convergence of untethered rituals, ceremonies, spins and mayhem. A place in which Ethno-music and the sounds and traditions of Spain make free associations with a family tree that’s branches spread across the Med and further afield. And yet it all sounds so very new and refreshing.
The second release in this double-bill finds the artist 3Phaz amping up the Egyptian Shaabi sound with a highly percussive mix of Mahraganat (an Egyptian electro street sound originally derived from folk music), Techno and various Bass-heavy subcultures.
A very popular working class music, that Shaabi vibe is rhythmically transported, flung forward into a futuristic soundclash vision of electronica and beats. Although “clash” isn’t the right word as this process, experiment is pretty congruous, with those rattling hand drums, percussive trinket rings and scrapes and both fluted and piped mizmar is very much in synch with the metallic synthesized effects, rounded if deep bass pulsations and sonic signals. Put it another way: that Egyptian, Middle Eastern source material is ramped up in a spin, swirl and body-locking production of electro, jungle music and fuzzed, fizzled alternative futurism.
Tracks like ‘Sharayet’, with its rapid hand drummed drills, willowed Egyptian oboe and acid Arabia beats, sounds like Farhot meets Man parish in Cairo! Meanwhile, ‘Type Beat’ has a more club-y sound mixed with stirrings of Dave Clarke, whilst ‘Shabber’ seems to merge the street sounds of the souk market with Jeff Mills. Neither dystopian nor joyous, Ends Meet is instead a heady septet of electro-techno powered Arabian and Egyptian workouts; a rallying excitable transformation of traditional folk sucked into a newly formed vortex.
The Mining Co. ‘Gum Card’
(PinDrop Records) 17th March 2023
Not so much an artistic leap in the dark, Michael Gallagher has nevertheless put aside his conceptual method of preparation and writing for something less structured and preconceived. On his latest and fifth album, Gum Card, the Donegal native, but London-based, artist and musician has instead managed to piece together a loose theme of nostalgia and youth; throwbacks to an age of obsessive card collecting to particular life-affirming scenes and foolish misadventures (or rather the failure of) dabbling with the occult.
These weathered memories, reminisces are interjected with episodes of artistic doubt, phobias and ambient-settings scored, partially, with in-situ recordings of the atmosphere and room in which they are meant to be recorded – the lounge style Casio keyboard accompanied leftfield ruminating ‘Waiting Room’ for example, originally part of a wider concept of songs to be conceived in a chosen room environment, using that spaces own ambient sounds.
The Casio sound does however highlight Gallagher’s taste for experimenting with the music of his youth in the 80s. A touch of Fleetwood Mac here, some dry-ice and a little retro-cosmic projection over there. Although Gallagher’s soft-peddled signature of Americana and troubadour songwriting is still very much in attendance; a gentle mix of a winsome Chris Isaak and Spain. If anything Gum Card has more in common with the album before last, Frontier, then the previous sci-fi imbued Phenomenolgy – his best work in my opinion. However, no one style dominates this songbook as such, and I consider this album another experiment, progression of his craft. Because amongst the initial knowing MOR and softly-delivered aches and yearns of ‘Primary’, a subtle flange-dream spell of 2000s indie colours the bluesy vibe on a song in which the protagonists are trying to avoid such despondent melodrama, which is ironic as Gallagher actually doesn’t even like the blues.
Later on there’s a hint of Mike Gale’s Casio Bossa pre-set on the memory lane feely ‘Shallow Stream’ (dedicated to fishing with Dad back in Donegal as a young lad, and memorable for accidently harpooning his old man’s hand with a fish hook), shades of Galaxie 500 and Mercury Rev on the title-track, and strobe-lit purred electro-pop on ‘Limits’.
As always there’s great subtlety at work, a slow reveal of emotional pulls and fragility; of nostalgia and memories seen at a great distance, revalued both with wisdom and yet confliction too. Some of the strangest of those draws features Gallagher’s wife, unintentionally stepping in to soothingly sing the opening ‘Wake Up’, and the subject matter of the stripped-back, intimate yearned closer ‘Broken Baby Bird’. Both bookend the album with hospital set pieces; the first, a lunar Fiona Apple and Western-tinged delirium about Gallagher’s fear of the place and needles, the second, a caring allusion to his wife’s vulnerable state after undergoing a major operation: the fledgling fallen from a nest to the ground. Obsessions of youth continuing into adulthood, the worries over loved ones and glimmers of storytelling are all converged with Gallagher’s usual slow release and an ear for something a little different to the usual American, troubadour style of deliverance. He might loathe his London home of recent years, and dream of leaving, yet that crumbling edifice has incubated the development of a real talent; a moody soul with an amiable burr who’s simultaneously comfortable and yet despondent at the state of it all. The Mining Co. proves a brilliant vehicle for Gallagher as he matures into an interesting storyteller and observer, and Gum Card is yet another finely tuned songbook from the Donegal longing maverick.
BONDO ‘Print Selections’
(Quindi Records) 24th February 2023
How does such a languorous sound still have such drive and purpose? Far from listless, definitely not “aimless”, the L.A. quartet reimagines Fugazi as beachcombers, enticed by the twilight hours of a Pacific Ocean surf on their debut album.
Locked-in (“consumed in the process” as they put it) BONDO wind and unwind, drift and with a navel downward gaze somehow weave the indolent slacker vibe into post-hardcore, post-rock, jazzy (that Archie Shep influence in the band’s PR spill not actually that difficult to imagine), lo fi, grunge-y evocations of displacement. The idea being that each member of the band, each personality is “dissolved” to make way for the music, the theme no less than a “mind made anew”, “cleared of data and ego” yet witnessing “nothing in particular”.
With very little in the way of vocals or prompts, it’s mainly down to the feels of the music and the action, which on occasions builds up a surprising intensity on tracks like the “let it all go” spurred grind and slowcore, yet almost carefree, ‘New Brain’ – think OWLS and Bedhead with a touch of Acetones thrown in.
This is California alright, but one in which the punks, garage bands and downcast all hang out on the beachfronts, or, clear their heads whilst observing the coastal tides ebb and flow. And yet, most surprisingly (although that PR spill does name King Tubby as an influence) the Pavement-esque, baggy at times, languid and slowly hung guitar arcs ‘Zion Gate’ (clue is in the title) has a dub-like bent to it.
Print Selections is filled with recast rumbled surf music, echoes of Slint and The Archers Of Loaf, splish ‘n’ splash drums and processed guitars diligently working towards an unburdened purpose and shape. BONDO have risen to the challenge of the album format, holding attention and the gaze with an intelligent visceral L.A. malaise and languorous challenge to cut loose and find those new horizons.
Farid El Atrache ‘Nagham Fi Hayati’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Available Now
In between leftfield excursions to Japan, cult French label showcases and repressed funk and soul rarities the reissue specialists (branching out with bands like Biensüre into releasing brand new original material too) WEWANTSOUNDS delve into the magic and sublime music of North Africa, Arabia and the Levant with this cinematic treasure from the late Egyptian superstar Farid El Atrache.
Released in 1974, the year that Farid passed away, the Nagham Fi Hayati album is a soundtrack of mawwal-longed sentiment, quickened shimmies and virtuoso performances that show off the matinee idol, singer and oud maestro’s repertoire: now at its most sagacious if ailing.
But first a little background. Born into a princely Druze clan family tree in Syria during WWI, in the grip of fighting with the French colonizers, Fraid, his mother and siblings were forced to flee the homeland. At around the age of nine Farid would pitch up in Egypt; staying until his death in the 1970s. Learning much from his Lebanese mother’s own musical prowess as a singer and oud player, the burgeoning pupil soon came to the attention of his elders; learning for a time under the stewardship of the polymath Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbat, he would quickly make it to the airwaves, appearing on the country’s National radio station. Moves into the flourishing Egyptian movie business would follow; Farid appearing in thirty-one musical films in total.
As a playboy figure that never quite made it to the alter, Farid romanced co-stars, famous belly dancers and even a former Queen – before his ousting, King Farouk’s wife Nariman Sadek – whilst maintaining a career on celluloid, stage and as a recording artist popular across the entire Arab world and even beyond – a favourite of Brian Eno mo less, a snippet from his famous ‘Awad Hamsa’ song of the 60s was used on John Lennon’s art project ‘Revolution No. 9’.
As it happens, he plays the aging respected singing star in the movie that this album soundtracks. And once the much younger rival ships out to find wealth in Brazil, at first saves, out of kindness, the fallen heroine (played by Mervat Amin) from public shame before falling in love with her for real. Directed by the famed Egyptian director Henry Barakat, Nagham Fi Hayati finds Farid’s character, even with a sizable age gap, doing the honorable thing in marrying his pregnant secretary, the father now across the world with no idea he’s left his former lover knocked-up.
Musically this translates into the lushly and swirled orchestrated classicism, Arabian poetry of sentimental longing and fulgurated vowel prolonged lamenting matinee, ‘Alachan Malich Gheirak’ (“Because There Is No One Else For Me But You”), and the equally yearned emotional orchestration of drama, Franco-Arabian and concertinaed charm, ‘Ya Habaybi Ya Ghaybin’ (“My Absent Lover”).
Sitting between those love-lost and resigned suites, ‘Hebina Hebina’ (“Love Us, Love Us”) picks up the pace with North African darting and dotted quickening organ and a mixed chorus of backing singers, encouragingly and excitedly clapping away.
Appearing for the first time in its full-unedited form (a section was originally cut from the original LP version), the incredible unaccompanied lute set, ‘Takassim Oud’, finds Farid proving every bit the “king” of that stringed instrument. An appreciative audience constantly animated and bursting into applause, eggs on a solo performance that evokes flourishes of Spain, Turkey, and Arabian folk, and Egyptian desert mirages. It’s like witnessing something as sublime, virtuoso and mesmerizing as Django Rhinehardt, only its on the bandy, elastic, thumbed and strummed, picked and plucked, jumping and blurry rapid scales resonating oud.
The first reissue on vinyl since the 70s, this skilfully performed filmic affair-of-the-heart can now be yours. I suggest you make room for it in your collection now, but also start sourcing those old Egyptian movies. Farid was a titan of the form; his voice sublime and musicianship masterful. What a real pleasure to be made aware of this artist and star. Big thanks to WEWANTSOUNDS for that.
GRANDAD ‘S-T’
6th March 2023
Remaining anonymous for now, the E numbers fed maverick who sits behind the GRANDAD alias regurgitates the sort of electronic goofiness that labels such as Artetetra and Bearsuit knock out with such aplomb.
Bauhaus avant-garde theatre morphs into wired skittles’ rainbow cutes, or, a transmogrified Candy Crush on the debut EP by this noted orchestrator, composer and mischievous artist. If I listed the many “illustrious” figures from the scene that this alter ego has worked with, then I’m sure you’d guess who it is. So instead just trust me that this is a seasoned pro who hasn’t just splurged on Damon Hirst’s medicine cabinet but knows (I think anyway) exactly what they’re doing.
A rush of Japanese cartoon fantasy and platform gameplay scores, garbled indigestion and springy silliness is all synchronized with (what sounds like to me) visions of a reggae-house Felix Da Housecat, Egyptian Lover electro, Mike Dred’s spindled rushes and a surprising spot of scenic gazing (the EP’s final harmonium-like, freshly breathed trans-alpine mirage ‘Pest’, which has a touch of Roedelius about it). And then there’s also a scuffed and worked merger of early Jeff Mills, Populäre Mechanik and Basic Channel on the penultimate tubular hammering ‘Runner Runner’.
Attention deficit disorderly conduct wrapped up with more dramatic looming deep moods, kinetic chain reactions, giddy and heavily processed voices (from where or what, who knows) and intricate beat making, GRANDAD’s debut EP submerges and mutilates echoes of µ-Ziq, Autechre, Ippu Mitsui and Andrew Spackman’s SAD MAN project.
Zigzag pills are popped and metals beaten out on, despite all I’ve said, quite a focused set of maximalist propositions. Although, just to further pull this debut EP into the psychedelic-induced realms, the CD is being packaged by the aptly entitled and self-evident mushroom technologists, the Magical Mushroom Company, whose aim is not to microdot the general public but to replace plastic with the “magic of mushrooms”. Lick it and see: it might work. But you won’t need any drukqs or stimulants to enjoy this deep set of colour and goofball electronica.
Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’
(Ant-Zen) 15th February 2023
A buzz, whine, flex and resonating ring of zinc and alloy, of recondite machines, permeates another heavy set from the Room Of Wires duo. The latest in a strong catalogue of such dark materials and alien mystery, Welcome To The End Game ties together a complex of dystopian woes, rage and dramas into an interlayered twisting and expanding metal muscled album of electronic.
Although both partners (both called Andrew as it happens) have never actually met, and each track is created apart in isolation remotely, every single fibre and inch of their processes comes together to sculpt the nightmares of our technological encroaching and constantly under surveillance world with a search, an escape, into the light. In practice this means for every granular and shadowy techno reverberation there’s a smattering of ambient and neoclassical passages.
It all starts with the sound of Cabaret Voltaire’s Arabian-electro protestations and snatches of dialogue, and moves across a vivid modulated, oscillating structure of ominous strains, tubular mettalics, deep bass-y echoes, slowed and stretched beats and the sound of kinetic-static charged ballbearings being moved around in a circular fashion.
‘Oceans Light’, featuring exm, is a surprise with its ascending beams of light, rising from the refracted still waters, and the mournful ‘Burial’ features a touch of Dead Can Dance’s ethereal, but also Eastern European holy, gauze, which brings some gravitas to the lamentable misty scene. Elsewhere there’s a grind and cosmic concentration of Cosey Fani Tutti, Gescom, Amorphous Androgynous, Art Decade and Mouse On Mars to be found lurking or springing into view.
An often unnerving experience in which you’re never quite sure of the environment, this electronic duo tap into the growing unease and fast-shifting realities of our present cataclysm, of which they believe, by the title, we’ve reached the “end game”, whatever that will reveal. As I said a few paragraphs ago, Room Of Wires navigate and balance the uncertainty with glimmers of escape, and moments of hope and release; the machinations and unseen forces that bear down upon us all at least dissipated enough to offer some light.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 549: Gillian Stone ‘Spirit Photographs’
November 15, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW
DOMINIC VALVONA
Gillian Stone ‘Spirit Photographs’
Dressed like a spiritualist flapper of the 1920s on the cover of her new EP, the Toronto siren and artist Gillian Stone summons various manifestations in the pursuit of processing both grief and the debilitating effects of mental health.
Made apparent by the title, the 19th century and early 20th century phenomena of “spirit photography” lends a somewhat esoteric, supernatural and mysterious angle to what is in fact the more academic psychiatric method of dealing with, and in time, coming to terms with loss. For each song on this deeply felt, atmospheric release represents one of the five stages of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ pioneering model: that’s Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally, Acceptance. The Swiss-American doyen of psychiatry, heralded in Time magazine as one of the 20th century’s “100 Most Important Thinkers’, wrote one of the leading works (On Death And Dying) on accepting the inevitable in the late 1960s, after personally witnessing such traumas and dealing with childhood illness herself – an epiphany was struck after facing the aftermath of the Second World War’s concentration camps.
More or less the standard in counseling and navigating death, Kübler-Ross’ process is merged with unscientific empirical desperation and the often charlatan practice of Spiritualism. As a practice that grew out of the infancy of photography itself, and in part from the collective grief of the American Civil War, certain practitioners using various techniques added dead family members, loved ones in apparitional form to sitting portraits – usually lurking behind the very much alive subject, or manifesting from their supposed psyche. What may have been a comfort to some – proof of life-after-death and messages from beyond the ether – was essentially a trick. However, Stone draws that which cannot be quantified, explained together with the scientific mind in an act of describing her own anxieties, pains, but eventual release from the spectre of depression. And although this is a sometimes haunting, uneasy EP, Stone’s beautifully accented prose and emotions are delivered with a lighter, diaphanous touch that exudes as much promise as sorrow. Even when covering the heavy melancholy of Black Sabbath’s morbidly curious ‘Solitude’ Stone turns a self-pitied gloom of a tune into a Pentangle (the quintessential English acid-psych-folk ensemble not the Satanic symbol) like, medieval reaching and more sweetened proposition.
Stone obviously turns the original’s pained, male-prospective on its head: with everything that entails. Mind, it’s still a trudge through the miserable, and it’s also used to represent ‘stage four” on the scale: depression. Talking though of addressing gender imbalances, Stone enters, at times, the heavily over-subscribed post-rock arena on many of the EP’s tracks. It’s a genre I’m not too impressed with personally, and find quite boring and mundane – sacrilege I know, but God I hate Mogwai and their self-indulgent turgid malaise. Stone however, brings an endearing, inviting almost, quality to that genre; especially on the gently sweeping, almost sleepwalking dreamt spell ‘June’, which opens the EP. Representing the first stage, denial, this slow drummed bohemian and quivery-droned chill is one of Stone’s most sublime turns; a kind of haunted communion of Dana Gavinski, Michael Peter Olsen, the Heartless Bastards and Aldous Harding – two of which appear on Stone’s specially created playlist of EP influences.
Working with co-producer Michael Peter Olsen (Zoom, The Hidden Cameras) and drummer Spencer Cole (Weaver, Weather Staion) Stone’s singular talents are amplified by the accentuated, careful and purposeful contributions of her foils. Especially on the two tracks already mentioned, but also on the folksy and gothic travelled tumultuous ‘Amends’ (Provincials and These Trials break bread with All About Eve as a snuggled suffused saxophone-like drone weeps), and David Sylvain mood piece ‘Raven’s Song’. The latter I’m sure has some American Gothic, Poe-like inspiration about it; after all, it is supernatural in sound with touches of creeping hymnal atmospherics and even the ominous clopping of hooves.
That’s both “anger” and “bargaining” dealt with on this journey. The final stage, turning point you could say, is of course “acceptance”, and this is reflected on the siren song ‘The Throne’. Full of “drowning” metaphors it might be, but the waters of despair also cleanse and wash away the helpless state of a mental stumbling block in the process. Hints of 70s folk-rock and country can be, intentional or not, detected on what is another beautifully conveyed plaint. I must emphasis however that Stone’s timbre, cadence and tone is far from mournful, or even helpless. Instead the abstract of dealing with such problems, illness and grief is articulated with a certain beauty (that word yet again) and spirit of perseverance and understanding. In an age, as Stone quotes, of “collective trauma” it can feel so comforting to know that others get your pain, or, in this case can transform it into something so constructive and creatively therapeutic: no matter how bleak. But unlike the parlour tricks, charade of spirit photography, Stone casts her ghostly visitations aside, finding a release and source of light in the darkness of both inner and outer torment.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Perusal #37: Edrix Puzzle, Surya Botofasina, Dead Horses, Etceteral, The Dark Jazz Project…
November 4, 2022
Dominic Valvona’s Albums Revue For November
Unless stated otherwise all releases are now available to buy
Edrix Puzzle ‘Coming Of The Moon Dogs’
(On The Corner Records)
Looping string theory jazz particles to a rocket ship bound for a deep space cosmology of titan referenced stellar sets, the Nathan “Tugg” Curan led Edrix Puzzle ensemble find a musical freedom amongst the stars of an alien concept world on their newest trip, the Coming Of The Moon Dogs.
Reimaging Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi transferred to the made-up body-locking Afro and futurist jazz planet of Battagon, Curan and his astro crew of Martin Slattery (on bass guitar, clarinet and saxophone duties), Tom Mason (double-bass), Oli Savill (percussion) and Darren Berry (violin) zip and zap across a lunar environment overseen by a galactic vision of mythology’s Gia and Uranus and some of their kin: Rhea, Dione, Hyperion and Phobe.
Amongst the analog calculus, signals and bleeps an equally elastic and moon-bound tripping transformation of the Art Ensemble of Chicago vibe takes shape on an imaginative off world. It’s a world in which Afrikan Sciences break bread with King Crimson; where Soweto Kinch reassembles the late Pharaoh’s astral projections. Within that science fiction the troupe balance totally untethered chaos with breakbeats and a certain swing.
David Ornate Cherry’s organic water bowl percussion joins a celestial voodoo march on the old country resonated Art Ensemble fiddled ‘Deep In Dione’, whilst Matthew “Doc” Dunn and Andy Haas slink and waft the vapoured murk of the living, breathing ‘V11’ coded suite.
Tracks like the time changing spin around the Van Allen Belt ‘Unhuman Hyperion’ verge on hip-hop. But it’s the imbued spirit of Herb, his peers and acolytes in the space, progressive jazz field that permeate this alchemist exploration of far out atmospheres. In a constant motion throughout with the energy released in all directions, and on all planes, Coming Of The moon Dogs is an incredible survey of quickened and more floated, waning galactic jazz evocations. A solid piece of art, lit by a remote chemistry and performed with assured but always probing musicianship. Rather an escape to the planet of the breaks than an escape from it, sci-fi jazz meets the experimental, spiritual and progressive in a visceral explosion of ideas, vibes and grooves.
Surya Botofasina ‘Everyone’s Children’
(Spiritmuse Records)
An acolyte of Alice Coltrane’s devotional embrace of Eastern spiritualism, imbued by that sagacious innovating jazz seer’s afflatus music and teachings, the keyboardist, composer and actor of some repute (from parts in Vinyl and Broadwalk Empire) Surya Botofasina bathes in his mentor’s light on this debut opus.
With the meditative, motored ascending arcs of Om Rama and such threaded throughout, Botofasina and friends set out on an astral and naturally felt work of spiritual jazz, trance, new age and ambient transcendence.
Our guide on this album of worship, remembrance and healing grew up at the Sai Anantam Ashram in the Southern Californian hills, where Coltrane led the daily bhajans, the traditional Hindu songs of praise and paean. His mother, Radha, was a disciple before him of this idyllic retreat’s guardian, a notable harpist but also pianist and vocalist herself and a one-time member of the American string band, The Spirits Of Rhythm. With such an enviable musical lineage and influence it’s no wonder that Botofasina would go on to become the Ashram’s music director and to internationally spread the word of this particular devotional form.
Encompassing all that reverence on his first fully realized album, Botofasina, aided by a cross-generational cast of guests, seeks to calmly honour but also demonstrate that faith. As a album to these enraged, divisive times, Everyone’s Children – with everything that album title’s metaphors, allusions, analogy entail – perseveres in the face of turbulence; softening and weakening the choppy waters in a blessed light of disarming but deeply felt warm suffused elevation.
With a both sentimental and yearning new age language of utterances from the Los Angles jazz singer stalwart Dwight Trible and fellow Californian indie folk vocalist Mia Doi Todd welling up and adding a certain wailed gravity, these divine acts of veneration ascend at a peaceable pace. The opening beachside temple suite running to over twenty-seven minutes as it shimmers and glistens with dappled electric piano, a serene air of the holy and washes of ambient synth.
Although often soothing with lightened touches of astral plane jazz and soul music, Botofasina’s piano occasionally stirs up outpourings of louder and harder pressed expressive emotions and serenades – as on the semi-classical and 60s jazz riptide evoked ‘I Love Dew, Sophie’.
Accentuating these spells of keyboard cascades, lit-up bulb like notes and rays the Canadian jazz drummer Efa Etoroma Jnr. adds splashes and tumbles, and the New York saxophonist Pablo Calogero wafts in with a suitable longing embrace. And overseeing it all is the Californian polymath (from noted producer to radio host, poet, percussionist and performer) Carlos Niño, who resembles a counter-culture 70s Carl Wilson chic. Together on this swami dedicated odyssey they border the heavenly as successful inheritors of Alice Coltrane’s devotional magic. As a debut album it’s a grand statement of spiritualism, nature and peacefully ascendant jazz; an escape from the material world.
Etceteral ‘Rhizome’
(tak:til/Glitterbeat Records) 11th November 2022
In what is a different, unique fashion, the Slovenian trio’s musical pairing of Boštjan Simon and Marek Fakuč (in part) react to their bandmate Lina Rica’s visual stimulus to create a cosmic electronic-jazz album of interlaced networks, connectivity and environmental crisis alarm.
Joining their fellow Slovenian compatriots, the dream-realism Širom, at Glitterbeat’s explorative, fourth world imbued instrumental sister imprint tak:til, the kosmische and organically freeform Etceteral base their new, mostly improvised album on the concept of its title, Rhizome: A continually growing horizontal underground stem, which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals; a non-linear network that connects any point to any other point.
With that theme, process in mind the trio reflect back a constant motion of soundscaping, rhythm and probing; balancing, at times, contemporary jazz with computer calculus, data, signals and metallic polygon shaped electronica. Yet, whilst Simon’s saxophone often drifts off into space, and his electronic effects, undulations more than hint at gravity-free zones in the cosmos, tracks such as the rolling, bounced and techno purred ‘Rome Burns’ allude to climate change and the extreme wildfires that engulfed much of Europe this year. It’s a great piece of flexible jazz that fuses Donny McCaslin and Go Go Penguin with Basic Channel to reflect an environmental angst of doom – fiddling with your suv sat nav whilst Rome burns to a cinder.
The rest of this interconnected, visual reactive album of performances and electronic augmented pulses and fusions goes through varying degrees of warping and reverberating transference. A jazz foundation is guided through a mirrored and computerised apparatus, which evokes shades of Squarepusher, Anteloper, Alfa Mist, Pyrolator and (rather handle as they share this column this month) Edrix Puzzle. Familiar echoes of rasped, cyclonic and honked sax, drum breaks and splashes receive an outer space production. Fakuč’s drums actually go into slow motion on the chrome soundscape ‘Dunno’. Etceteral turn it on and out on their improvised odyssey and contortion of activism. And yet the rhythms often driven, progressive and on occasion buoyant or bobbing, make this a most unique sort of an electronic dance album, despite its avant-garde, free and cosmic jazz foundations.
Karu ‘An Imaginary Journey’
(Beat Machine Music) 18th November 2022
Lost in the Karu alias of mystical, atavistic mining and reimagined absorptions and traverses, the Italian double-bassist and producer Alberto Brutti’s collaborative project transforms, transmogrifies a fertile polygenesis palette of rituals and dances and ethnography to produce a contemporary affected album of Afro-Futurism, jazz and primitivism.
Wrapped up into a musical journey across both familiar and more ambiguous, vague cultural landscapes, Brutti creates suggestive atmospheres and ceremonies; many of which are conjured from title references to old worlds, religious and mythological etymology. In that wide field of influences, inspirations there’s the Abrabic “kalam”, which can roughly be used to mean “speech”, “word” or “utterances” pertaining to the Islamic faith, but was also the catchall term to define that religion’s tenants of faith in the face of the philosophical doubters; the antiquity Hattian empire festival “purulli”, held at the Bronze Age settlement of Nerik, dedicated to the earth goddess Hannahanna (which may well be the source of the Biblical “hosanna”); the West Slavic (otherwise known as Lechites) tribal name for the chthonian god “Nyia”; and the ancient Greek word for “breath”, or in the religious context, “spirit” or “soul”, “pneuma”.
The first of that quartet lends itself to the album’s opening peregrination of African drums, Blacks’ Myth and cut-up Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell jazz renderings, reversals, abrasive industrial resonated sounds, Širom type otherworldly primitivism and stick choppy rhythms. Following in its wake there’s signs of Andy Haas, the esoteric, elephant trunk raising horns and the no wave sound of Mars and Milk TV. The latter title of that same quartet of wordy mentions signals a move further East, with again, vague notions of the Indian, Baul but also a soundtrack of downtempo breaks (ala Alfa Mist and J Dilla) and the hallucinogenic trance of Fursaxa (if remixed by Clap! Clap!).
‘Spear Of Leaves’ however, rearranges the bedeviled Faustus pact blues and dialogue of Robert Johnson on a palanquin caravan lumber across vapours of snorkeled saxophone. The final dream sequence on this imaginary travelogue drifts into a hollowed-out cane spun and fluted rainforest wash; ending on a more laidback piece of South American flavoured geography and waning jazz.
Between the haunted illusionary and mysterious, a removed time-travelling worldly plane emerges. Herbs, Roberto Musci, Amorphous Androgynous and Drexciya converge somewhere in the middle of the underworld and elevated.
The Dark Jazz Project ‘S-T’
(Irregular Frequencies) 14th November 2022
Making good on this summer’s three-track introductory EP, Andrew Spackman now unleashes a whole album of his latest regeneration creation, The Dark Jazz Project, on an unsuspecting audience.
The singular maverick electronic and art-house boffin recently hung-up his SAD MAN alias (after a splurge of numerous releases over the last five years) to crunch the codes of jazzcore.
‘100% political, 100% jazz, 100% dark’ we’re told, this latest platform for Andrew’s often sporadic leaps in electronic music and crushing techno filament cut-ups is about as removed from that jazz tag as you can get. The fact he’s also borrowed Sun Ra’s ‘Space Is The Place’ mantra too only feeds into the confusion. Any semblance to jazz is lost under a heavy tubular and granular transmogrification of the ominous, mysterious and, well, dark.
For this is the alien, sci-fi broken and fed through the Aphex Twin, Basic Channel, Radium, Rob Hood, Jeff Mills and Niereich & Shadym machine. Although the album’s opening hardline, dialed-in and pummeled beat gabbling Sun Ra lend sounds like Holly Herndon being thrown into the Hadron Collider, and Madlib seems to get trampled over, detuned and dissimulated on the bladed, driven and compressed frequency lunar ‘No Input’.
Andrews full gamut of skills, sonic palette comes to bear, as touches of primal, and even paradise moulding scores are set against more dissonant and chrome coated beats. Pins rain down on pulsating graphite spiky landscapes and imaginative darkly lit techno blocks of scrunched giant, weighted noise. A mirage or a topographic ocean; Olympus Mons or scorched earth, it all sounds a million miles away from even the most edgy and freeform ideals of jazz: not a saxophone in sight.
The Dark Jazz Project is yet another challenging move from one of the UK’s most inventive, inspired and, crucially, interesting leftfield electronic and techno composers of the last decade.
Yemrot ‘The Sunken Garden’
(PRAH Recordings)
Who wouldn’t when faced with the despair of the modern world and in processing the deep loss of a parent want to take a giant leap into escapism and the fantastical? Looking into one such yearning chasm the Margate-based musician Jimi Tormey, acting under the alias of both Yemrot and the character Dill Dandin, finds solace in a neverworld of the dreamy and plaintive: a creeping sadness to be exact.
Unfortunately, in part, triggered by the death of his father (the gorgeous, welling-up and heavenly ached ‘Big Tree’ being the most obvious eulogy to that passing) The Sunken Garden is a both heartfelt and also psychedelic process of grief and some drama.
That process is, at times, a family affair with his mother Lisa providing the majority of emotive violin/viola, and his brother Eric offering harmonies alongside their sister Tuli, but also mixing and mastering the whole mini album. The results are achingly beautiful, yet there’s a constant deep feeling and vapour of unease, despondency and shadowy despair that swells up or looms over the magical illusions.
Canterbury scene troubadours and Syd Barrett influences wind and delicately emerge from the heavier atmospheres of Alex Harvey, Daevid Allen, Soundgarden and Radiohead. The album’s centerpiece, ‘The Ballad Of Dill Dandin’, is an eleven-minute stretching instrumental of changing, moving parts and passages. From the Floydian to chimes of Mark Hollis an almost theatrical drama and shimmer of something magical and creates a starry aura. Dill floats and tumbles across a trio of “Learning To” affixed songs that balance the soft with the harsh, the cosmic with the mournful.
Classical forms, the psychedelic, progressive and alternative all merge to form an interesting twisting journey of loss and acceptance; a working through of beautifully heart wrenching and articulated poetic expression. In the end I don’t think that sinkhole world is an escape route, but just a more imaginative coping strategy at dealing and conveying such miserable times. The masterful, gentle ‘Big Tree’ alone will move even the most numbed to tears, and deserves a place in any list of the best songs in 2022.
The Magic City Trio ‘Amerikana Arkana’
(Kailva) Late November 2022
Finally out the other side of the pandemic The Magic City Trio emerges with the second half of their originally conceived double album package of Americana, Country and Western scored songs from 2018. If part one was consumed with death, bad luck and mental health, part two is concentrated on the themes of serenaded, romantic affairs, with disarming little tales, alms, hymns and barn dances dedicated to both unrequited and strained relationships and knockabout love.
As with the previous album, a familiar soundtrack and language, lyricism is used to convey the contemporary: something of the moment. The bell tolls and tremolo rattle snake sets of Ennio Morricone and untold Western themes rub up against Nashville, the Carter Family, Lee Hazelwood, Mariachi brass, Willie Nelson and the psalms songs of America’s Methodist Church, yet this is an unmistakably modern record. Timeless feelings, subjects nonetheless, but with a slight updated twist.
An extended guest list joins the band’s principles, the June Brides’ Frank Sweeney and Annie And The Aeroplanes’ Annie Holder. Most notably the Nashville virtuoso John Heinrich, who lends that irresistible steel pedal quiver and upward bend to the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo if covered by Teenage Fanclub, with Orbison and The Carters in tow, ‘Our Life In Chains’, and the Red Rhodes-esque accompanied Gram and Bonnie Raitt in heartache duet ‘She Left Without A Warning’. “Record breaking” (for what I’m not sure) banjo player Johnny Button meanwhile adds his Appalachian hoedown spring to ‘The Final Day On Earth’ tale of woe and alarm. Also on that same lamentable group effort, Primal Scream’s Andrew Innes offers up bird sounds, flutes and mellotron. He’s back, playing both electric and acoustic guitars, on the Muscle Shoals Stones like, touching ‘You’re My Best Friend’ – which actually could be a Primal Scream attempt to once more ape the Stones’ spiritual washed-up tides.
Frank, when not carrying a tone and timbre that evokes both Richard Hawley and Mick Harvey, and Annie, vocally a mix of Kirsty MacColl and a rustic Marianne Faithfull, share an array of twanged, bowed and stirring and washboard scratched instruments with Jeff Mead, Matt Lloyd, Larry Saltzman, Dave Howell and others: a full panoply of the country sound.
Amongst the self-penned declarations, hungdog lovelorn regrets and outlaws-on-the-run sense of rebellious romance, the band cover the theme from the archetypal thrown-together-in-desperate-circumstances Western ‘3:10 To Yuma’ (great movie, both the original and remake) and the Wesleyan Methodist church hymn, ‘And Am I Born To Die’. The first of which, originally penned by Frankie Laine, keeps a sense of the matinee drama and atmosphere but now sounds a bit like later Crime And The City Solution bounded together with Scott Walker (At The Movies) on a heavenly aria touched dusty trail. The latter, is every bit as reverent and elegiac, conjuring up the “trembling spirit” and quivering to the sounds of timpani and the bells of judgment. It did remind me however of Rick Danko; more lovely than stoic serious damnation.
Amerikana Arkina once more sets the mood, a complimentary partner to their more moody, plaintive 2018 songbook. Souls are bared; heartache delivered with a cinematic panache, and the Americana cannon once more successfully invoked.
Leverton Fox ‘In The Flicker’
(Not Applicable)
The gentle breeze rustling through the leaves and the sound of bracken and broken sticks underfoot in a less circumspect Sussex woodland has seldom sounded more alien, inter-dimensional and mysterious. Yet the Leverton Fox trio of Alex Bonney, Tim Giles and Isambard Khroustaliov has transmogrified the environment/atmosphere of their site-specific improvisation to beam out towards altogether more imaginative realms.
Intensified, if that’s the word, the trio of noted musicians/composers/artists in their own right attempt to sonically sculpt a 3D world with the added use of Dolby Atmos, a ‘surround’ format. Immersive being the key word, they draw the listener into lost worlds, primal soups and a more eerie lunar looming, time-travelling spheres.
Širom set-up in the undergrowth with Miles Davis at his most transient and wafting, Autechre, Tangerine Dream and Jon Hassell as ghostly traces of hidden sources merge with various aerial squiggles, zip-lines, machine purrs, occult sounds beamed from the Fortean Times transmitter, whipped up winds, clapped beats, crackles, raps, propeller and exotic sounding wildlife. A fully improvised soundscape that crosses mystical terra firma and unearthly corridors, In The Flicker takes in the most far-out, minimalist touches of jazz, electronica, dub, the dark arts, industrial, kosmische and Foley to create a certain mystique. The Leverton Fox(es) skilfully, intuitively explore and push a concept, conjuring up portals to more abstract planes; the familiar woodland site a mere jumping point for misty and bubbling invocations of an entirely different nature.
Dead Horses ‘Sunny Days’
(Maple Death Records) 14th November 2022
Jangling to a soft-stomping flange-induced country, rock ‘n’ roll bluesy acid dirge the Dead Horses esoteric sense of despair rings loud with slackened melodrama and scuzzy, dirty wiles. Whether it’s uprooting Spaghetti Western sets or up amongst the Andean condor nests looking down on the Nazca Lines, or, wading through swamps and thumbing a bum ride to a less idealized Laurel Canyon, the shared male/female vocal Italian group add a chthonian mystique and a touch of the Gothic to their brand of wrangled malcontent and doomed romantic aloofness.
A fair share of the new album, Sunny Days (released on the always intriguing and quality-delivered Maple Death Records label), rattles, spooks and melodically inhabits a reverberated atmosphere of Appalachian mountain songs and both languid and more heightened hysterics. A rewired Grace Slick, early Bad Seeds, Gun Club, Wall Of Voodoo and ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ Bowie flail about The Blood Meridian on the album’s opening song, ‘Can’t Talk, Can’t Sleep’, and Bosco DelRey mixes it up with the Velvets, Rey Crayola on ‘Hobo Talks’. The more mournful ‘The Cross’ has both an hallucinatory and The Kills vibe about it.
One of the standout songs however, takes a different direction. ‘Macabro’ still has that acid-folk country kick but also summons up a Latin drama, with a stirring vocal performance and Italo-Iberian stamp of bolero. Apparently this is the band’s first ever song in their native Italian tongue, and it’s all the better for it: more mysterious and hot-bloodily intense. No wonder it has become a sort of live anthem for the band.
It’s a long stretch from the Po Valley of antiquity to the Death Valley of inspired, mirage shimmered Western blues, but the Dead Horses as our guides navigate it with a flourish and macabre curiosity. If Crime And The City Solution buddying up with Aguaturbia and The Vaselines sounds like a desirable description then the rather ironically entitled Sunny Days stunt ‘n’ stomper is for you.
Biensüre ‘S-T’
(WEWANTSOUNDS)
Bringing together a mixed Mediterranean and Middle Eastern diaspora of musicians with a collective sense of belonging and yearn for their homelands, Biensüre transduces various cultural threads into a sophisticated and cool production of electro-pop, disco and sorrow.
Crossing paths in the cosmopolitan port city of Marseille, a refuge for centuries of émigrés and exiles, the group’s ranks include Kurdish, Turkish, Italian and Armenian lineages: The latter as a consequence of the early 20th century genocide. Within that gathering of cultural affiliations, and using the repurposed French expression for “of course”, Biensüre rally around the experiences of their poetically and longing yearned vocalist and saz player Haken Toprak. By the sounds of it that includes not just pining aches for his Kurdish-Turkish roots but declarations of unattainable love and serenaded exotic fantasies.
Already well into a contemporary revival of Anatolian and Middle Eastern synthesized pop, electro and disco (see groups such as Altin Gün and the Şatellites) Biensüre evoke such original trailblazers and icons as Erin Koray, Baris Manco, Moğollar and Kamuran Akkur. They augment those influences with subtle hints of Moroder, Vangelis, a throb of EDM and an unlikely bit of Nu Shooz on the drum-pad sizzled new waver ‘Çawa’.
Electrified misty veils hug the dancefloor, seductive movers are made, and swooned wanton vocals ache for what’s been lost on a unhurried smooth production that is simultaneously Turkish, Kurdish, Greek and Arabian in nature.
As funky as it is clean and lush, the Biensüre LP soaks up the great Marseille exile community and comes up with the goods. Breathlessly groovy yet casting back to the language (‘Zivistan’ the Northern-Kurdish word for “winter”) and memories of their ancestral homes, a nice balance is struck emotionally and musically between the modern and tradition. In all, a great pop record of Med flavours, with a soul and purpose.
Trans Zimmer & The DJs ‘S-T’
(Artetetra)
Launched into the most bonkers MIDI sound collage of platform hopping video game music, Esperanto era Sakamoto experimentation, slacker American dialogue, kooky fantasy and cartoon classical movements, the collective Trans Zimmer & The DJs (surely a play on the notable German film composer Hans) reimagine a Ritalin-starved Wendy Carlos running amok on Candy Crush.
Within the walls of a Taito/Capcom 80s arcade a loony tunes of polyphonic pre-set symphonies and chaotic snatches of gameplay chat trample over the course of a most silly bubblegum opera. It’s Baroque on speed; the Flaming Lips colouring in classical music scores; a grand misadventure of super hyped-up fanfares and cute vocoder J-Pop, hip-hop, electronica and lemon meringue pie snacks. Even aboard the S.S. Romulus the waters are choppy, tossing us around in a strange voyage of cult library music and late 90s American psych. I haven’t a clue what’s going on: not that it matters. The whole manic, yet always melodious and fun, experience seemingly a run through of the kitsch, crazy, miss-matched playful minds of those who created it. Skidding and scrabbling on a quest inside a 32-bit fantasy, Zimmer and friends level up across a most confusing, colourful whistle and skipped aural sinfonietta.
FOR THE FUNS
Casta ‘The Temple Of Doom’
(Bandcamp)
I suppose it was inevitable that at some point someone from the extensive late metal face villain and underground hip-hop genius MF Doom fandom would play on the Indiana Jones franchise – Indy literally escaping death in an airplane crush only to fall into the clutches of the Thuggee cult. I even named my playlist homage to the former Kausing Much Damage founder and prolific name riffing soloist, collaborator after the second Jones cinematic adventure myself. And I’m not alone on that score.
Released a year to the day of Daniel Dumile nee DOOM, Viktor Vaughn, Zev Love X’s death, the enterprising Portland producer Casta has merged the score from the Temple Of Doom with both samples and interview snippets from the MF Doom cannon: though it could have done with more Short Round quips in the mix.
In the spirit of such hip-hop mashups, with even Doom himself not adverse to sampling some cult, obscure and leftfield scores, Casta has some fun in paying tribute to a much-missed artist. From the Monsta Island Czars all-stars team-up to his work with a new breed of rap stars, such as Bishop Nehru, he leaves behind one of the greatest legacies in Hip-Hop: though his influence, creativeness, wordplay, pop culture, visuals and artwork reaches far beyond rap music, as this project proves.
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